No Good Deed
by MeraNaamJoker
Summary: Eight years after Bella gives birth to her daughter, a letter from Edward arrives and changes everything. AU Post-Breaking Dawn.
1. Prologue

**A/N: OMG IT'S NOT SET IN A NEW MOON AU. **

**Yeah, it's still me writing. I can see why that might throw you off. ;-) **

**1. This is a POST-BREAKING DAWN fic in canon AU. If, like me, you're so leery of heartfail that you have become _very choosy _about what fics you'll read in that setting, and you have questions about who ends up with whom and what sort of ending this is, feel free to PM me. I don't care about spoiling this fic.**

**2. This is also a fic-ification of a Hindi movie, _Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, _which is one of my all-time favorites and which I believe everyone everywhere should watch, including the part where the electric guitar isn't plugged into an amp and yet still manages to produce the chords to "_Koi Mil Gaya." _If you watch it, you'll be able to figure out the ending to this story.**

**3. I'm just going to say this here, one time, for this entire story: Twilight belongs to Stephenie Meyer. Not me.**

**4. Warnings: language, sexual content, and excessive sappiness.**

**5. Thanks so much to my darlings FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for beta'ing and suffering through all my freak-outs while still insisting they love me, cretin for pre-reading and coming up with all the objections so I don't have to (and also suffering through my freak-outs), and to BellaFlan for naming this fic and thus saving you from having to sound out another Latin monstrosity.**

**###**

She could remember it all. She could even make sense of it now.

"_Son, her body can't withstand it."_

"_She has a plan. We have a plan. At the moment of delivery we're going to inject her with my venom."_

"_You're not planning on surviving this human. Emergency vampirization."_

"_Jake…"_

"_What was the point of me loving you? What was the point of you loving him?"_

"_Bella, love, please reconsider."_

"_No. No! I've felt him. You know he's there. It's not right for him to die."_

"_And it is right for _you _to die? I'm sorry, love, but I can't agree."_

"_It will be fine, Bella, you'll see."_

"_Rosalie, no no no please don't let him do this no—"_

"_Jasper, why are you waiting? You've got Rose, get her too."_

_A wave of peace, comfort, well-being._

"_She's out."_

"_You don't have to assist, Edward."_

"_Yes. I do. This was my mistake. I'll help to fix it."_

_Strange sounds._

_Jostling._

_Being flipped and turned. It was kind of fun._

_Then—_

_Something was wrong so wrong and all she could do was kick kick kick_

"_Oh my God. It's still alive."_

"_Open the womb and let's have a look."_

_Shearing loud unbearable screeching noise_

_Light so bright it hurt her eyes_

_The tightness in her chest was gone. That was better._

"_Oh dear Lord. Oh dear Lord."_

"_Carlisle, it's alive."_

"_She's alive. Edward, a girl." _

_Cold. Everything was cold and wet and wrong and she wanted the voice. She wanted the voice more than anything, the one that spoke to her in the dark warmth and let her know she wasn't alone._

"_She wants her mother."_

"_Hold her, Edward; tell her it's going to be okay."_

"_I'll hold her. Edward, it's all right."_

_Hard and cold and another familiar voice. Someone cradling her._

"_Rose, I tried to kill her. Nothing will ever be all right again."_

"_I told you that but you always think you know best, you insufferable prig. Jasper, if you don't leave this house right now you're going to have to kill me, or I'll kill you first."_

"_She means it, Jazz."_

"_Did Bella ever say what she wanted to name the baby?"_

"_She's been looking in a baby name book."_

"_Give her to me."_

_The voice!_

"_Oh my God, she's awake."_

"_She wants her mother!"_

"_How do you know?"_

"_She just—I just know."_

"_You give me that baby now."_

"_Bella, love, you can't—"_

_The voice sounded different. Raspier. Harder._

"_Don't you ever call me love again. And you. Jasper. GET OUT."_

"_What?"_

"_You took her out of me without my permission, you bastard. Give me my baby."_

_The voice and warmth, more warmth, the right warmth. A wonderful smell. Maybe taste?_

"_Ouch!"_

"_No, no, baby. No biting humans."_

"_Bella, weren't you thinking of naming her after your mother, or Esme?"_

"_I'm not naming her after one of you. And my mother can't even meet her so what's the point of naming her that?"_

_Silence._

"_What would you like the baby's name to be, Bella?"_

"_Saisha. You can put that on her birth certificate. Saisha Charlene Swan."_

_More silence._

"_We'll talk about this when you're feeling better."_

"_Yes, Edward. We will."_

_Back in the cooler arms. _

"_When you feed her, don't you dare give her human blood. I don't want her to be like you. Like any of you."_

She could remember.

She just wished she couldn't.


	2. Tum Paasse Aye

**A/N: All my love to FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for prettifying my mess. The song for this chapter is "The Whaler" by Thrice.**

**# # #**

Saisha turned the letter over and over in her hands, idly noting the way the sun made her skin glow in random patches. She'd have to be more careful about applying makeup in the future.

_Jason Scott, Attorney at Law_, read the return address.

Saisha knew the name, of course. Her mother had made use of Mr. Scott's services at least once every six months since Saisha's birth. This, however, was the first time an envelope had ever come addressed to her alone.

_Saisha Swan._

They'd gone back to their original surnames, this time. Saisha was done growing, after all, and there were no further reasons to hide.

Looking around to be sure she was unobserved, then listening for passers-by just to be certain, Saisha jumped to the roof of the ranch house her mother and she shared, climbing to the top of the clay tile and settling with her back to the chimney stack. This time of day, no one in their suburban San Diego neighborhood was home to observe her, anyway.

Carefully tearing the envelope along its seam, she removed a cover letter with the Scott letterhead on it followed by several sheets of costly writing paper, covered in a handwriting she didn't recognize. She read the cover letter first.

_Dear Miss Swan,_

_Your father, Edward Cullen, left instructions to me to post this to you on your eighth birthday, with the request that you read it and keep it from your mother. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me through the usual channels._

It was signed, _Jenks._

Her _father._

Saisha almost couldn't breathe at the thought. Her mother had a recording, long since transferred to mp3, of her father playing some of his compositions, but there was no such record of his voice, and no photos except one, which Bella Swan insisted be kept in Saisha's room, where she didn't have to look at it. And here was a whole letter, pages and pages of words, just for her, from the mysterious stranger with the red hair and golden eyes.

The vampire who had tried to save her mother, by killing her.

_It wasn't his fault, _she'd tried telling her mother, on several occasions. _He couldn't have known._

_He knew I didn't want that, and did it anyway, _Bella always replied firmly. _He would do anything to keep me safe, I always knew it, but I ignored it for too long._

Saisha wondered if it was strange, understanding why someone would want to eliminate her while simultaneously being relieved he hadn't succeeded. She couldn't hate her father. She didn't know him well enough.

And she was avoiding the real issue: the letter. It surely couldn't be accidental that he'd scheduled the missive to arrive precisely when his father, Carlisle, had determined that she would have completed her physical and mental growth.

_It's a little slower than it might have been, given that she was born prematurely, _he'd said after doing some calculations at Saisha's three-week checkup.

_Isn't that sad? _Bella had replied, banked fury smoldering in the eyes identical to her daughter's. She was still pale and emaciated, pressing a pillow to her stomach when she sat up so the stitches wouldn't hurt as badly, but she wouldn't let the Cullens hold her daughter any more than strictly necessary.

Carlisle had made no reply to that.

Hands shaking a little, Saisha lifted the letter from her father and began to read.

_Dear Saisha,_

_I know this must seem very sudden, especially given that, per your mother's wishes, I won't have made contact with you over the course of your life. I assure you that, were circumstances any different, I would not violate her trust in this fashion._

Saisha frowned. Her father had seen nothing wrong with violating her mother's trust if he considered it expedient for her safety or well-being. Apparently that hadn't changed.

_However, there are some things I must do; things that might lead to the end of my existence, although I can't call it death, since I am no longer alive._

Her heart clenched. He'd known, then. Just as Bella had suspected.

_I cannot regret meeting your mother, although I'm tempted to do so for her sake. But if I had never met her, there would be no Saisha, and strange as it might seem to you, that thought is unbearable to me now. Still, our relationship cost her many things—her proximity to her father, her ability to put down roots, her health on more than one occasion, her fertility, and nearly her humanity. The sacrifice I regret most, though, is that of her relationship with Jacob Black._

Billy Black's son? Charlie Swan had mentioned him offhand once or twice to Saisha when they were alone, but he'd never given any indication that Bella and Jacob knew each other.

_The particulars of our love story were strange, as any love story between one of my kind and a human must be. I'm not sure how much Bella will have told you, so I'll try to be thorough, yet succinct. When we fell in love, she caught the attention of a vampire gifted in tracking, who chose her as his prey. Emmett and Jasper killed him, but not before he caused her serious injury. Afterwards, she begged me to turn her, but I refused._

Saisha gasped. Her _mother?_ Had wanted to be a _vampire? _That couldn't be right. It _couldn't. _Her mother, who refused to let Saisha touch even animal blood except on special occasions, who valued human life so much that she had lived with Saisha out in the middle of nowhere for years so there would be no chance of accidental slip-ups on her daughter's part. She knew what vampires were like. She wouldn't have risked becoming a murderer like that. She wouldn't have wanted to live forever. This was ridiculous. He was wrong.

She read on, anyway.

_My misgivings about her safety proved to be well-founded on her eighteenth birthday, when a minor paper cut nearly turned into a feeding frenzy on Jasper's part. I left for her own good, but I did it in a clumsy, stupid manner. I told her I was bored with her and that I didn't want her anymore._

This was... so strange. None of this made any sense.

_It was all a lie, of course, but I underestimated the depth of her feelings for me. She didn't recover, as I expected. Instead, according to those who were there to watch it after our family left, she descended into a dark depression. The only person who helped her, after several months, was Jacob Black. Their friendship grew deep in my absence._

_Through a series of tragic misunderstandings, I thought Bella died, and I went to the Volturi to beg them to kill me. I could not exist in a world where she did not. They refused to comply, for fear of offending Carlisle, and so I tried to force their hand. She barely arrived in time, thanks to Alice._

_After that, I couldn't let her go again, although I knew I should._

_When we returned, I discovered that my departure had created terrible consequences for us all. The Volturi knew of her existence and demanded that she be turned before she could betray our secret to the world. Jacob Black was in love with her and she with him, though she first denied it, even to herself, and then insisted she loved me more. The mate of the tracking vampire had vowed vengeance against me and was killing randomly to create a newborn vampire army to take on our family._

_I did my best to keep Bella and Jacob Black apart, because he was a young werewolf, and they are inherently unstable, dangerous creatures. I failed. Her love for him was too strong to allow her to stay away, even though I truly believe she was in love with me too. Every time they were together, she was… different. I could see in his memories how she acted with him when I wasn't around. She acted like a normal girl, someone I would have disdained if I had met her in his company for the first time. Nothing like my Bella. I once heard her call him her "personal sun," and he thought of me as an eclipse._

_Our family, with the help of the La Push werewolves, defeated the newborn army and its leader. Around the same time, your mother, after much begging on my part, agreed to marry me, despite her misgivings. I invited Jacob to the wedding, hoping it would provide closure for everyone concerned. He ran away, and only came back at the reception to dance with Bella. It didn't end well._

_When we found out Bella was pregnant with you, we flew home. I'm not sure how aware you were, or if your memory allows you to recall things you couldn't comprehend at the time, but none of us knew how you would turn out. We did know that your mother was dying because of the drain on her body from your development, though. The plan, suggested by her, was to cut you from her body once you reached full term, and then change her to a vampire immediately to prevent her death._

_Jacob came to visit._

_When I saw your mother's face, the first time she saw him after the wedding, I knew. She never lit up that way for me. She loved me, but part of her love for me was because of what I could provide her in terms of immortality. She was very young, and feared growing older—I blame her mother for this, by the way—and on some level she knew, I think, that she would outgrow me someday. I am stuck forever at the emotional development of a seventeen-year-old boy, and what adult woman in her right mind wants that for a life companion?_

With a giggle, Saisha shook her head. He was dead right about Grandma Renée, from what little she had gathered from their infrequent emails. Still, he was wrong about her mother.

_I tried to persuade her to leave me, and try again, with Jacob, if she wanted children so badly. They both refused. Jacob left, saying he wouldn't stick around to watch her kill herself. Not long after that, we finally managed to talk sense into Rosalie and persuade her that killing Bella to save her baby was the wrong choice to make._

_You know the story of your birth._

_We left immediately afterward. Of course, you had to remain with us for a while so that your growth could be monitored, but after some research and speaking to friends in South America, Carlisle determined that you would be all right. After that, Bella insisted that she leave with you, although she accepted child support from me. She feared that your morals would be irreparably damaged by being raised by us, and perhaps she was right. We exist in the midst of humans, but we are no longer part of them, and sometimes we forget what is right._

_The Volturi are still an issue, one I plan to take care of shortly. However, there is one thing I cannot repair, and that is the relationship between your mother and Jacob Black. I believe that what the two of them had was true love, even though it looked like friendship for so long that your mother didn't recognize it. It wasn't her fault that her only other experience with romance was with me, a creature whose very existence is set in stone. No wonder she couldn't understand the real nature of what she felt until it was too late. I think, too, that the age difference—he is two years younger than she—might have had an impact. However, in their twenties this should be of no importance._

_So, I am taking a chance today. I hope you never receive this letter, because if you do it means I've been unable to come to you in person. But if it should arrive, then I would make a final request of you. You are an adult now, by every measure, so I don't feel it's asking too much. _

_Do what you can to reunite Bella and Jacob._

_They're both free agents, and their hearts can't be changed by wishing, but to this day I suffer great guilt for the part I played in driving them apart. They should have been together, Saisha. If I had never shown up in Forks, or if I had done the right thing and stayed away from Bella, or if one of a thousand things had been just a little bit different, they _would_ have been together. It's my fault that they're not. It's my fault that your mother was robbed of the human love she should have received. If they are together again, it will either give them the closure their final encounter denied them, or their feelings will reignite and they will begin the romance they were meant to have._

_Enclosed you'll find a photograph of Jacob Black as he was eight years ago. Because of his werewolf nature, his growth was accelerated to what he should have looked like at twenty-five when he was only sixteen, so I imagine he'll look just the same, although hopefully by now he'll have learned to wear a shirt at times. Jenks has my instructions to aid you in whatever you need in your search, and you should feel free to contact my family to get their support as well._

Saisha shook the paper until the photograph fell out. It was of her mother, in a wedding dress, her arms around the neck of a tall Native American man, scruffy and unkempt, whose hands pressed tenderly to either side of her face. Neither of them seemed aware of the photographer, or, in fact, of anything but each other. Saisha's breath lodged in her throat as she gazed at the picture. She couldn't catch much of her mother's expression, but Jacob Black's face held nothing but naked love—and pain. Once she had seen something, she couldn't forget it. Saisha knew she would be seeing Jacob's face in her dreams.

_I'm not asking you to make them fall in love or anything ridiculous like that. Just to put them together once more and see what they make of it, and each other._

_Saisha, you are a gift. I was too short-sighted to understand or appreciate what your mother's pregnancy would mean, and through my rash actions I destroyed her love for me. I hope, though, that you have retained some small measure of affection for me, and will do this because of that feeling. _

_With all my love, your father,_

_Edward Cullen_

Stunned, Saisha lowered the letter to her lap and stared sightlessly over the identical roofs and postage-stamp-sized yards around her.

Her father, who hadn't been a part of Saisha's life since her first birthday, wanted to get her to hook her mom up with another guy? His rival from _high school_? Of course, due to the Cullens' odd obsession with repeating high school over and over again, maybe it wasn't as strange as it could have been.

It sounded as if this Jacob person had really loved her mother. It looked like it, too, given the picture. She gazed at the slightly wrinkled print, trying to read the new Bella Cullen's face. What had she really thought of Jacob? Her mind was impervious to Edward's gift, although not to Saisha's. Maybe her father had been wrong. Maybe his former wife hadn't loved the boy at all, or maybe she had loved him like a brother, or a best friend. Saisha didn't have many friends, so she watched people who did, trying to understand the ways they acted together. Maybe it had been just as difficult for Edward Cullen to understand human friendship.

Then again, her mom didn't have very many friends, either.

Maybe it would be worth it to reunite them if her mom could have a friend again.

And maybe…

Saisha stared at the picture, this time focusing on Jacob Black, but after a moment she only saw the paper, the tiny fibers that created its sheen and mix of colors.

Maybe Jacob Black would like her. Maybe he'd want to be… kind of a dad, or stepdad, or something.

No, that was stupid. He'd just been worried about her mom. She realized now that the husky, imperfect voice from her earliest memories must have been Jacob Black, and he hadn't wanted her any more than her father had.

But what if he changed his mind, like Edward Cullen did?

( * * * )

"I've got a surprise for you," Bella said from the doorway with a smile.

Saisha looked up from the book she'd grabbed as soon as she heard her mom's Audi turn onto the street. The letter was safely beneath a floorboard in her bedroom now. "Really? What is it?"

"Check it out." Bella walked into the kitchen, and Saisha followed. Pulling a bag from the mini-cooler she carried, Bella waved it in front of her daughter. "Smell that?"

"Steak tartare!" Saisha snatched the bag away and stared inside. "Oh my God, Mom, that smells _so good._"

"It's your birthday. I figured a little indulgence was okay." Bella got two plates out of the cabinet and set them onto the counter. "And, since your body's a grown-up, I got champagne to celebrate."

"Awesome." Saisha grabbed the bottle and crossed the kitchen to pick out two of their mismatched glasses.

"I'm going to sear mine. I know, I know," Bella forestalled Saisha's protest. "It's sacrilege to ruin all that good blood. I'm a human, honey, and even though I got over my blood aversion when I was pregnant with you, it doesn't mean I like the taste. Don't worry; I won't make you cook yours."

She pulled out a frying pan and switched on the gas flame, then added a little oil and her tartare patty. Saisha made a face, but poured the champagne without further comment.

Once they sat at the table, Bella sighed deeply and smiled. "So. How was your birthday?"

Saisha shrugged. "Boring. I'm looking forward to being able to leave."

"I can imagine," Bella sympathized. "Just another week or two and we'll be gone. I can set up my own practice anywhere you like."

"Counselor Swan," Saisha teased. At her mother's laugh, she continued, "It's time for my checkup, though."

The smile disappeared from Bella's face. "I know." She lifted her food to her mouth without bothering to elaborate.

The strained silence dragged on until at last Saisha broke it. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"No, that's not true. It's my fault. I shouldn't be so touchy."

Saisha shrugged. "I'm your daughter. I'm glad you're touchy about me. But I really do want to see them, too, Mom. I'm sorry."

Bella sighed again, but this time with resignation. "I understand. They're your family. And at least we don't have to let years drag by between visits to explain the rapid growth."

_Just one year at a time, _Saisha thought, but kept it to herself. "Will you come with me?"

Bella was only twenty-six, almost twenty-seven, but a shadow passed over her face that for just a second made her look old. "Do you need me, Saisha?"

After a moment's thought, Saisha shook her head. "No. I'll be fine."

Once they cleaned up after dinner, they sat down to read in the living room. Bella had a massive ethics textbook balanced on her lap, while Saisha stuck with Jung, curling on her side and wedging her feet beneath her mother's legs to warm them.

"What are you reading about?" Bella asked.

"Jung's thoughts on word association and blocks in self-expression." Saisha lifted her head to look at her mother. "Wanna try it?"

"Sure." Bella set down the ethics book and turned her attention to Saisha. "Go for it."

"Sock."

"Shoe."

"Fur."

"Dog."

"Warm."

"Home."

"Sun."

"Jacob."

Trying to mask her start of surprise, Saisha pulled away so they weren't in contact anymore. If she fooled her mom, she probably only succeeded because Bella had jolted in her seat as well. She hoped that Bella would interpret any mental image she'd gotten from Saisha as her own memories. Sitting up slowly, Saisha prodded, "Mom? Who's Jacob?"

Bella picked up her book once more and held it between the two of them like a screen. "A boy I used to know, back in high school."

"A nice boy?"

A noncommittal sound floated from behind _Key Issues in Ethics. _

"What was he like?"

Bella tilted the cover down just enough for Saisha to see her eyes peeking over top. "He was… funny. Sweet. Really good with mechanics, fixing cars, motorbikes, stuff like that. Protective. Pushy. Angry."

"Those things don't seem to go together," Saisha pointed out.

Bella laughed, but it sounded like a sob. "I, uh… He was having a hard time, and I was the one who was giving him the hard time, so it was pretty contradictory, yeah." After a moment's thought, she added, "He was a werewolf. He didn't know it till he turned into the wolf for the first time. It's a total transformation, too, not like that half-wolf, half-man crap you see on TV. It scared the poor guy to death. He was only sixteen when it happened."

"And he _told_ you about it?" Saisha had a hard time believing that. If there was anything she knew a lot about, it was keeping secrets, and werewolf stuff sounded like it should be a major secret.

"He wasn't supposed to." Bella lowered the book till it rested on her chest and stomach. "It was against the rules. We weren't even supposed to be friends anymore, but… we were _best _friends. He found a way around the rules."

Here it was. The big question. "Do you miss him sometimes?" Saisha asked, soft-voiced. If Bella said no, then forget it.

Bella hesitated, and then nodded, her mouth pulling down at the corners. "I do. I think about him… not every day, but a lot. Several times a week, at least. I wonder how he's doing, if he's okay, if he's forgiven me for the way I treated him. Things like that."

"Maybe you should look him up," Saisha suggested.

Bella lifted the book again. "That would be a bad idea, honey."

"Hmm." Saisha read her own book, but her thoughts raced as she did so.


	3. Tumne Na Jaane Kya

**Kisses to cretin for pre-reading my silliness, and to FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for fixing my mistakes. The song for this chapter is "Cold Desert" by Kings of Leon.**

**# # #**

The minute Saisha stepped off the plane, a tiny black and white whirlwind smacked into her stomach.

"Saisha!" Alice squealed, squeezing so tightly that she would have snapped Saisha's bones, had she been human. "I'm so happy you're here I can't stand it!"

Saisha giggled and wrapped her arms around Alice's deceptively slight form. "I'm happy to be here, Aunt Alice." It was always such a relief to be with the Cullens, any of them. There were so few people around whom she didn't have to pretend, so few with whom she could be completely real. The Cullens understood her in some ways that even her mother couldn't.

Tompkins Regional Airport only had one baggage claim, so the two followed in the path of all the other passengers headed away from the gate area. As they walked, Saisha asked, "How is Uncle Jasper?"

"He's doing well, but didn't want to risk being around so many humans. He's not used to it anymore since we started spending our time in Volterra, and being in an airplane is more difficult than in the open."

"I could have come to Italy," Saisha said with a frown. Once, she had seen Alice the most frequently of all the Cullens, since Alice would fly out whenever she saw Bella deserted by Saisha in order to prevent it. Now she only got once a year.

"Don't be silly. Bella hates to have you go that far, and we keep the house in Ithaca open all the time anyway." Alice gave her a comforting sideways hug. "We don't get to see you that often, Saisha. It's not an imposition, believe me."

After collecting Saisha's bags, they headed to Alice's Porsche. Once out of the parking garage, Saisha's aunt drove like a madwoman, weaving in and out between cars, running yellow lights and a few red, and darting out onto Route 13 without appearing to look anywhere but at her iPod.

"Precognition isn't always the most effective way to navigate, Aunt Alice." Saisha clutched at the door handle, resisting the urge to close her eyes.

"I'm fine." Alice finally finished selecting the playlist she wanted and at least seemed to turn her attention to the road. "How's your mom?"

"She's doing well. Finally finished with her MFT, so she's excited about that."

"That's wonderful!" Alice clapped with glee, steering with one bony knee as she turned to Saisha in excitement. "Has she decided where she wants to set up her practice?"

"No, not yet." Saisha kept one eye on the road. "I think she wants to get some experience working in a group setting before she does something solo."

"Ugh. It's so frustrating to me how I can't see what she'll do next. Of course, now that you're here…" Alice wrinkled her forehead in concentration, and then sighed. "No. All her plans involve you, so they're all fuzzy."

"I'm sorry." Saisha wasn't really sorry at all, though she knew it was polite to say otherwise. She didn't like the idea of anyone, not even her aunt, keeping tabs on her like that. It was creepy.

"It's all right." Alice patted her hand comfortingly. "So tell me, what are your plans?"

"I don't know." Saisha shrugged. "Mom says I'm still too immature to use any of my degrees to work, and I guess she'd know, but I'm bored with school."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Believe me, I _so _understand. Is it still difficult for you to be around people?"

"No." That was the thing Bella had worried about most—that Saisha wouldn't be able to see humans as individuals, and would accidentally eat one. "This past year, it's gotten a lot easier. I still don't understand them, though."

"What's to understand? They're all pretty much the same."

A chill shot through Saisha's spine to fan across her shoulders. This. This was why her mother hadn't allowed her to be raised by Cullens. She contented herself with saying, "I don't feel like I've figured them out yet."

"Hmm," Alice responded in mystified tones. "Okay. Well, what do you want to do once Carlisle's finished your exam? I was thinking we could head to New York City and do some shopping!"

"That sounds like fun." Saisha _loved _to shop, but she rarely got the opportunity to do it with someone else. Bella bought everything online. "I brought extra bags."

Alice reached to squeeze her hand. "That's my niece."

Saisha leaned her head on Alice's shoulder, letting her hair fall to shield her face from the view of the road. "Yeah, I am."

( * * * )

Carlisle turned away from his microscope to smile approvingly at Saisha. "Everything looks wonderful, my dear. You're a perfectly healthy, full-grown vampire-human hybrid."

"What about my reproductive system?" Saisha turned the monitor to look at the display. "Oh."

"Yes." Carlisle looked, too, his flawless brow creasing a little as he pointed to the appropriate figures. "I'm afraid it still doesn't look as if you're going to be able to have biological children. We always knew it was a strong possibility, with you possessing an odd number of chromosomes and with your father already being a mutation of _Homo sapiens._"

"Yes, of course." Saisha stared at the screen and willed the tears that swam in her eyes to dissipate, but they didn't want to. _Stop it, _she told herself fiercely. _It's not as if you could find someone willing to try to reproduce with you anyway, unless you want to look up Nahuel, and he looks like he'd rather eat you than have sex with you._

It didn't work. She concentrated on swallowing the lump in her throat and surreptitiously whisking away the tears she couldn't help, while Carlisle gave her more information she could deduce for herself about her cellular structure, completed growth patterns, and blood panels. She had studied microbiology more than some people with degrees in the subject, after all.

"Are you all right, Saisha?" Carlisle put his hand on her knee, bending to meet her gaze.

"Fine." Saisha shook her head and dislodged more tears, then rolled her eyes at herself. "I'm sorry."

"No, don't apologize. After all, if I as a vampire knew the desire to form a family of my own, then I can't imagine what you must feel. Just remember, you have other options available."

"I don't like Nahuel!" she blurted, and Carlisle laughed. It always sounded so strange when the vampires did so; the vibrations ricocheted in their chests until to Saisha's ears the repeated chords took on the reverberations of an old-fashioned organ.

"I meant adoption," he clarified. "When you're more emotionally mature, surely it's something you can investigate."

"I don't know." Saisha sat back heavily with a frown. "How could I explain the non-aging thing? I look like a senior in high school. And then there's the whole issue of _not understanding people._ Mom tries and tries—I mean, it's _why _she went and got her MFT—but no matter how much she explains, I have such a hard time _connecting. _It's like… I don't know, like I imagine learning about the common behaviors of the African elephant must be for Mom. She can comprehend what's normal for them without really identifying with it, right? That's how I feel about human interaction." She shrugged, helplessness weighing down her shoulders. "That would be really bad for a human child."

"Tell me why you think the way you feel is different from humans," Carlisle said, fixing her with an unblinking gaze. "I must confess, to me you seem quite normal, almost exactly like one of them."

"Yeah, but you forget to breathe sometimes," Saisha pointed out. He laughed again, and she continued, "I don't know. I can see the muscles rearrange themselves on a person's face, and I know that it's a response to an emotion, and then I can guess what that emotion is, usually correctly. But it doesn't affect me. I don't feel it _with _them. I don't feel the same things they do in response to the same stimuli. Like, when I watched videos of the tsunami in Japan? Mom was sobbing; I found myself counting the dead and calculating the amount of resources required by first responders. Mom says my abilities to empathize and sympathize might be delayed, but I'm afraid they might be defective."

"I can't believe that. The tsunami was years ago, and you have grown immensely." Carlisle went nearly motionless as he thought it through, only his lips stirring. "You aren't without emotion. Your response to the confirmation of your inability to reproduce indicates that. You just have a difficult time knowing what your emotional reaction should be as a response to _human _feelings. Maybe that's the right response for you."

"Everything I do is right for me. I have almost no peers, and practically zero measure for what's standard." Saisha shook her head. "I don't want to be just an anomaly, Grandfather. I'll encounter far more humans than I will vampires, and certainly hybrids, over the course of my existence. I want to understand them. I want to come as close to being one of them as is possible."

"It's an admirable goal, Saisha, well worth pursuing. Edward—" Saisha flinched, and he interrupted himself to ask, "I'm sorry, does it make you uncomfortable to hear his name?"

"No." Uncomfortable, no. Giddy, yes. Bella Swan _never _said Edward Cullen's name. It was always _your father. _"I'm sorry; please go on."

"Yes, well, as you said, humanity will be your environment and your companion, and it behooves you to attempt to comprehend its intricacies. I don't think it's an impossible feat. You're far more like your mother than Edward, which is something I'm certain would delight him to know."

Saisha bristled. "I'm like him too." Everyone always said she was just like her mom, but just because she had her eyes didn't mean she was her clone.

"Well, you have his hair." Carlisle reached to stroke her head, and Saisha closed her eyes under the paternal caress. Cold stone performed the gesture, but she understood the emotion behind _this_ very well: love. "Believe me when I say, though, that none of us would ever wish for you to be like us. We all wish we were more like you. We wish even more that we could be one of them again." He withdrew once more. She opened her eyes to see him staring into the microscope. "Even if we cannot truly recall what that would mean."

"I don't think it would mean I had a better family," Saisha said after a pause that seemed long to her, but he probably barely noticed.

"The fact that you can think to say that means you are truly humanity's child," he replied without looking up.

( * * * )

"Try on this top."

"Why bother? We both can tell that it'll be one-point-six centimeters too short on the midriff," Saisha protested, holding the aforementioned article of clothing in front of her. Alice had wanted to go to the sort of places where attendants brought the clothes to the shopper in the required size, but Saisha had pointed out that she might need to keep a low profile wherever she and her mother moved next, and one-of-a-kind designer products wouldn't help in that endeavor. "Besides, it's got a horrible loud print, Aunt Alice. Just because my hair's red doesn't mean I want to make myself stand out in a crowd."

"You haven't got a choice about that." Alice spoke in a trilling undertone, too quiet for human ears to pick up even if they could have kept up with the speed. To the other shoppers around them, it probably sounded like musical buzzing, a CD put on fast-forward in some distant location. "Everyone is staring. No, you didn't miss a spot with your makeup. It's just that you're beautiful."

She truly meant the "just" in the last sentence, Saisha could tell. To Alice, physical beauty was a given. "They could as easily be staring at you." Saisha would never consider drinking human blood at this point in her life, but she didn't know how Alice could stand it. So many hearts beating, the rhythmic slosh of blood rushing through so many veins, so near to their mouths... It was a good thing Alice had perfected the art of control. "I guess it's just as well Uncle Jasper stayed in Volterra."

"He would agree with you, though I think he's still a lot better about it than he gives himself credit for. Even before we got together, he wasn't the monster he makes himself out to be."

Saisha hummed noncommittally, pretending to devote all her attention to hanging the top back on the rack. Truth be told, Uncle Jasper frightened her, and her memories of her birth didn't help the issue, even though he had never been anything other than kind since then. "Does he still use J. Jenks for his legal needs stateside?"

"Hmm. Yes, though I don't think they've been in regular contact since we moved our full-time base of operations to Italy."

"I got a letter from Jenks on my birthday."

Alice froze for so long that Saisha almost nudged her. "He sent one to you? I haven't been keeping an eye on him."

"It was just a cover letter. For another letter. From my father."

Alice went still again, and this time Saisha did give her a little push as a reminder to pretend to need to breathe. "Let's go to Central Park," Alice said, seemingly in response to the nudge, and left the store before Saisha registered the door closing behind her departure.

By the time Saisha had followed Alice's scent to the right park bench, her aunt had recovered somewhat, although she was still having a hard time remembering to blink.

"Tell me what's wrong." Saisha sat beside her, resisting the urge to pat comfortingly. That sort of gesture wouldn't be appropriate for a vampire. They hated being touched when upset. And why was it that the right response for one of them was so easy to determine, even though she still couldn't empathize? All she felt was scared and off-balance.

Alice's breathing caught, sped up, and then slowed to an uneven pace. "Your father."

"I'm sorry; I didn't mean to make you sad." This must be sadness, right? Except it looked like complete stupefaction, but that couldn't be correct.

Alice blinked again, and then focused on her face. "I'm not sad, Saisha. It's all right." After another moment, she asked, "Can you tell me what he said?"

Saisha hesitated. It was against her mother's rules to use her extrasensory talents to communicate, but the Cullens didn't understand those sorts of strictures, and anyway her mom would never find out. Lifting one finger to rest on the back of Alice's wrist, she sifted through the contents of the letter at a speed a human mind couldn't have followed, but Alice tracked it easily. Once Saisha reached the close, the vampire asked, "Are you going to do it?"

Saisha nodded. "I feel like I owe it to him to try." But she'd forgotten her finger still lay in contact with Alice's skin. A confused jumble of feeling and images—her father, Jacob Black, her mother, loneliness, solitude, and pain—all flitted across her thoughts and through the touching point.

Alice shook her head. "I don't know if Jacob Black will want to do anything other than kill you, Saisha. The last time I saw him, he seemed convinced you weren't meant to be."

"So were you," Saisha blurted. Alice went immobile, shock and remorse clear in her big yellow eyes. Saisha knew she shouldn't have said it, but it was true, and it wasn't fair for Aunt Alice to use it as an argument against Jacob Black and pretend like _everybody _but her mother hadn't thought she should be eliminated from the world. "I don't think I should hold that against him and not everyone else. Plus, I bet when he sees me he'll change his mind. People usually like me, once they actually meet me."

"Beauty can open a lot of doors that would stay closed to less attractive people, but vampires are only beautiful to humans," Alice warned. "Werewolves see us differently. We reek to them, as they do to us. Everything about us repels them. There's no guarantee he won't hate you on sight, Saisha."

"I know." Saisha folded her hands in her lap, trying to make the action casual. Was her personality so lacking, that beauty would be the only way Jacob Black could approve of her? "But I'm not a vampire. I have to try. How many chances will my mom get to have a friend who understands her life?" _How many chances will I get to actually have a stepdad?_

"Yes. You're right about that." Alice's voice held eight years' worth of grief, and Saisha remembered that once, Bella Swan had possessed two best friends. She'd given them both up for her daughter, and never tried to find that level of intimacy again. "Well, can I help?"

"Do you know the right computer programs you should buy to track someone down?" Saisha pulled out her phone and called up her Internet bookmarks. "I Googled but I can't figure out which ones would be most effective for what I want."

"Sweetheart, this isn't the sort of thing you do yourself," Alice asserted, patting Saisha's knee before floating to her feet. "You get other people to do it for you for obscene amounts of money. That's the Cullen way."

_I'm not a Cullen, _Saisha wanted to say, but instead she replied, "Okay. Tell me who to call," as she rose too.

"Let's go back to the house." Alice started toward the parking garage where they'd left her car. "It's better to use one of the burner cell phones for this sort of thing, and I left them there. One of the hazards of playing with my niece—I never know what I'm going to do next!" She turned a teasing smile over her shoulder. "Of course, that's also one of the benefits. I haven't really had a lot of unpredictability in my life, at least, not since Bella."

( * * * )

By the next day, Alice had a pretty good idea of Jacob Black's financial status (shaky), career (in good shape, given that mechanics were always in demand), volunteer efforts (noteworthy), and a copy of his latest driver's license photo. Saisha stared at it—just as her father had speculated, he looked exactly the same as he had in the picture with Bella, except less haggard and happier.

"He's not married," Alice said, scrolling through the reports she'd been sent. "Judging by his credit history and bank accounts, he doesn't have a serious romance going on, either."

"You can tell that?" Saisha leaned over her aunt's shoulder to examine the computer screen.

"Well, look for yourself. Hardly any restaurant or flower purchases, primary groceries are single-serving microwave meals, a lot of low-carb stuff—I'm guessing for his father since Billy Black is diabetic—beer, low-end deodorant and soap, and he rents a lot of action movies and video games." She shrugged. "Either he's got the easiest-going girl on the planet or he's single."

"He could have a guy," Saisha pointed out. "They might be interested in the same things."

"No, he doesn't buy enough of any one thing to share. Anyway, if there was ever anybody who was heterosexual, it was Jacob Black," Alice said with a tinkling laugh. "That's one thing I'd be even better able to judge than one of his fellow humans." At Saisha's questioning look, she clarified, "Because I simply don't care. No prejudice to affect me. Vampires all have, um, very broadly delineated sexuality."

"Ah." Saisha filed that bit of information away. "All right. Well, that makes _that _part of my father's instructions easier."

"Look at this." Alice copied a name from the report and pasted it into Google. After clicking on the first website to pop up on the results, she pointed at the screen. "He works at a camp for disadvantaged youth."

"Kids?" Saisha quailed inwardly at the notion. She'd never had anything to do with other children. Too breakable. Too eatable. Too incomprehensible. "What about them?"

"It's not so much them I'm thinking of, it's the camp itself. They're looking to hire an MFT for full-time counseling of the children during the summer." Alice lifted her brows with a grin. "That might be a perfect position for your mother."

"Oh!" Saisha considered it. She would probably have to stay somewhere nearby, but close to the camp, if her mom got the job. Maybe she could be a day visitor so she could keep an eye on the proceedings. "If I can get her to apply for it—"

Alice made a dismissive noise and waved one hand. "Apply for her."

Saisha giggled. "Won't she be surprised if she gets the job?"

"It's nearly nine months before she'd start. That's just about the right time for you two to move on again. You can tell her you were just thinking ahead." Alice shrugged. "It's not a lie, after all. They'll both be there in the middle of the temperate rain forest. All that rain leads to a lot of indoor activities, which can lead to _indoor activity _if you see what I'm saying."

"I do _not _want to see what you're saying." Gross. "It's worth a shot, I guess. But it seems like a really long time to wait."

"Your father delayed the letter to you for years. A little longer won't affect the results one way or another." Alice wrinkled her nose in frustration. "At least, I hope not. It's not like I can predict it accurately. I _hate _that."

"If I'm not there at the camp, you still can't see what will happen?" Saisha said, surprised. She'd assumed her mother's plans would change significantly enough that Alice would at least be able to get an idea, eventually.

"Werewolves and other shapeshifters have the same effect on my visions as you do, sweetie." Shaking her head, Alice clicked the link address and emailed it to Saisha—an unnecessary convenience, since they both had eidetic memories, but the Cullens were so careful to maintain appearances that they rarely dropped their charades, even in private. "You're on your own on this one, I'm afraid."


	4. Sapne De Khaye

**Mad love to cretin for prereading and FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for their awesome beta skills. Song for this chapter: "Mountains" by Biffy Clyro.**

**# # #**

"Saisha Charlene Swan!"

When Bella used that tone of voice, Saisha never delayed her response. She darted down the stairs, touching only every third step, and appeared before her mother had a chance to finish calling.

"Yeah, Mom?"

Bella presented a letter on cheap white paper with an obviously photocopied letterhead. "What the hell is _this, _child?"

Wow. Her face was red, and her heart rate had accelerated. Either embarrassed or angry. Saisha was betting on angry. Taking the letter, she scanned the contents. "It looks like a job offer."

"Don't play dumb with me." Definitely angry. "You did this. You applied for me."

Warily, Saisha nodded. "Yeah, I did. Why are you so mad?"

"Maybe because you used my personal information to try to get a job for me that I didn't even want?" Bella froze, and then her face turned even redder. "Did your Aunt Alice help with this?"

Filled with new trepidation, Saisha nodded.

"_Alice_," Bella hissed, in the tone of voice most people would have used to say _Satan._ "Did you pretend to be me during an interview, too?"

Was that really bad? People did stuff like that in movies all the time and it was just a funny joke. Bella didn't look like she thought it was at all amusing. Saisha lowered her head, tears of shame pricking at her eyes. "Yes."

"Unbelievable." Bella's foot tapped once, only to be stilled. "How did you do that?"

"I told them you had laryngitis and asked if you could conduct the interview via chat."

With a sigh, Bella turned to the counter, idly poking through her mountain of supplements she had to take daily. "Well, you must have done a good job, because they want me for the position. The salary's pathetic, by the way."

"We don't need money," Saisha said, sinking down in a chair.

After swallowing a handful of pills, Bella took the letter back, looking it over. "Hoh National Rainforest? Ugh. I _hate the Pacific Northwest._"

No need to ask why, but Saisha pointed out anyway, "It's my birthplace. It can't be all bad."

"It was lucky to have you," Bella grumbled. "It's cold, the rain is constant, the people are weird, and there are way more vampires."

"I can keep you safe from them." Uncle Jasper had made sure Saisha knew everything he did about self-defense during their rare encounters. Plus, if Jacob Black were there, Bella would have nothing to worry about if a nomad showed up. "And…" Saisha grasped for something, anything, that would make this okay with her mom. "I won't have to wear makeup nearly as much. It'll be a lot easier for me to go out." Bella didn't look convinced. Time to lie. "I can interact with other people up close, including children. You know I've wanted to do that for a while."

"No, I don't think I did know that, Saisha." Bella examined the back of her hand. Two of her fingers were crooked, broken when Saisha had fought her at two years old. She'd wanted to kill a passing moose. Bella had told her no. That had been one of the times Alice had showed up to catch Saisha before she ran away.

"Well, I have. And it would look good on your resume, right? Real references and a short-term employment situation that's supposed to be short-term, so it's not a drawback?"

Rolling her eyes, Bella rose to her feet. "You're as good as your father at talking me into something, and I'm just as bad about giving in."

A surge of guilt and uncertainty roiled in Saisha's chest. Bella never meant any comparison with her father as a compliment.

"Saisha, you need to know this was not okay."

"But why?" Saisha demanded, resisting the urge to stomp her foot. "You'll probably really like the job."

"That isn't the point, honey!" Bella threw her hands up in the air. "The point is, you lied! You went behind my back and violated my trust. I need to be able to _trust_ you, Saisha, because that's a vital component in close relationships." A flicker of fear danced across her face. "Am I getting through to you at all?"

Saisha felt the same fear on her own countenance. "Yes?" Except she still didn't understand why what she'd done was wrong. She just knew Bella didn't want her to do it.

"This goes back to the communication thing." Bella crouched in front of her to look up into her face. "If you want something from me, you have to tell me, honey. Not show me."

Saisha tried to hide her frustration. In Bella's eyes, her telepathy was a liability for human interaction, not an extrasensory gift. This by far had been their biggest source of contention when she was younger. When Bella would pretend not to see what Saisha showed her through her telepathic abilities, Saisha would end up breaking things from sheer fury. Eventually, she had realized her mother was dead serious, and resigned herself to verbal communication. "Okay. I'm sorry I made you mad, Mom."

Bella shook her head again, her misgivings plain. "I forgive you. Please don't pull something like this again."

"Does this mean you won't take the job?" If Saisha had already failed, she didn't know what she would do.

"No, I didn't say that. I didn't realize being able to get out and about meant this much to you." Walking to the refrigerator, Bella opened the freezer and started poking around in the contents. "And to be honest, not everything about the area is awful. It _is _really beautiful. It'll be summer, so at least there'll be breaks in the rain. Sometimes. And we'll be close to your Grandpa Charlie."

Saisha noticed her verbs had slipped into future tense. That was a good sign. "He's going to be weirded out by how much I've grown."

"As long as his 'don't ask, don't tell' policy is still in place, we'll be okay. He hasn't really been worried since your father and I got divorced." Taking out a package of frozen chicken, Bella put it into the microwave and started defrosting it. "Plus, he loves you, so he's not going to pry if it might mean that he doesn't get to see us."

"Grandpa Charlie definitely loves me," Saisha agreed slowly, a sudden thought popping into her head. Now _there _was a resource she hadn't thought to explore. Grandpa Charlie must have known Jacob Black, given that Billy Black and he were still best friends all these years later. Maybe he could give her an insider's point of view on the relationship between Jacob and Bella. "I haven't Skyped him in a long time."

"Well, maybe you could do that this weekend." Bella detested the phone, and Skype, and for some reason when her father and she were on opposite ends of the line they both turned tongue-tied and incoherent. However, when he was talking to Saisha, he became positively chatty.

"Yeah." Saisha got to her feet and got out a pot for pasta. As she turned the faucet on, she said, "I'll definitely do that."

( * * * )

"He did _what_?"

Grandpa Charlie's face looked purple, but Saisha wasn't sure if that was a trick of the monitor display or not. Patiently, she explained, "He sent me a letter. Please don't tell Mom. I'm afraid it would upset her." _I'm afraid she'll buck my plans._

"No, of course not, Isha." Charlie ran a hand over the top of his head, visibly trying to compose himself. "Well, what'd it say? If you don't mind telling me, of course."

"I don't mind telling you." Most of it, anyway. "He said that he was sorry he had broken up Jacob Black and Mom, and that he wanted me to try to get them back together."

Okay, the purple was definitely not just the monitor. Charlie Swan's entire head flushed, and he seemed positively apoplectic. After he sputtered and then got up to pace out of the camera's point of view for a couple of minutes, he sat down again. A few deep breaths later, he asked, "He give you any ideas on how to accomplish that?"

"No. But I was able to figure out a few things thanks to Aunt Alice, and now Mom's going to be working at the same summer camp where Jacob Black volunteers next year."

That revelation garnered another round of pacing. Saisha waited, sipping idly on some water and leafing through a new book on microbiology and ethics.

Charlie once again sat before the webcam, his hair now standing on end and pointing in about five different directions. "You're saying you haven't let your mom know about this."

"No." Saisha wrinkled her forehead in puzzlement. "You think I've made a mistake."

"Not telling family about the things you want from them is usually a mistake, Isha. Trust me, I know."

"But if I tell her, she won't go," Saisha pointed out patiently.

"That would be her choice, honey." Charlie sighed. "There's a lot of unfinished business between those two."

"I thought they were just friends. That's what Mom said, even though my father believed otherwise."

"I don't think Jacob _ever _considered your mom and him to be 'just friends.'" Leaning closer to the screen, Charlie asked, "Did your dad bother to explain why he wanted those two back together?"

"He said he thought he interfered with the way things were meant to be. Do you want me to read the letter?"

"I guess so." Once Saisha had read the whole thing to him, he said, "Well, that's just… spiffy. Fine. Believe it or not, I'm gonna be at that camp myself."

Saisha squealed with delight, bouncing up and down in her seat. "Yay! But… why?"

"It was Jacob's idea. A lot of those kids haven't been close to a cop unless it was one arresting somebody they know. He figured, maybe get a few cops down there who'll give the kids a better idea of what being a police officer means, show 'em we're not all bad guys who come to take away their relatives. Stuff like that. I don't have much use for my vacation time now your mom's all grown up, so I agreed. It's sort of fun, most of the time."

"Oh." Rationally, Saisha knew that "disadvantaged children" meant children who had far less than she did in material terms, but she hadn't ever thought about how that would impact their point of view on law enforcement. "That's nice of you, and smart of him."

"He's a smart guy. Don't let the fact that he's a mechanic fool you. He got his degree in business." Charlie ran his fingers through his hair again. "I can't believe I'm going to help you with this. Only reason I can think of is so that they can both move on a little better."

"And because you love me." Saisha smiled as winningly as she knew how. She might not understand a lot about normal behavior, but she knew that Grandpa Charlie fulfilled his grandparental obligations in the best way he could. She loved him just as much as he loved her.

Charlie shook his head reprovingly at her. "Yeah, yeah. Don't remind me what a sap I am." He tapped his fingers on the table. "Listen, you had better not be there when your mom finds out Jacob's at that camp. If she has any clue you had anything to do with it, she'll pull you both out of there so fast your head'll spin, and I'll end up not seeing you till Doomsday."

"But I wanted to watch when they see each other again for the first time!" Pouting, she sat back in her seat and crossed her arms. "What if they just act all adult and strange and don't talk about anything important?"

"Tell you what. I'll check in with you. The main office has wi-fi, and there's a chance my phone'll get data reception too. I can't remember whether or not it did last year because I didn't need to use it for that. I'll give you progress reports, let you know what's going on, and we can put our heads together if things don't seem to be working out."

"Do you think I can come up after a little while?" She really, _really _wanted to see Jacob Black. A guy who was interested in helping kids even when he wasn't a parent himself might actually be a guy who was interested in being a stepfather to an anomaly like herself.

"Well, we'll have to see." Charlie shrugged. "It probably won't hurt anything, but Bella might act a bit different if her daughter isn't around to watch her, you know what I'm saying?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess so." Thinking it over, Saisha added, "She might be self-conscious."

"Right."

That reminded her. "Are you going out with Sue Clearwater still?"

Charlie's face turned bright red. "We weren't ever really going out. I found out that Billy Black had been sort of interested in her and backed off."

"So they're dating now?"

"Nope." Charlie chuckled. "Now she's dating one of her co-workers from the hospital. We all get together for cards. Billy didn't go after her either. You just don't do that to your best friend."

Intrigued, Saisha asked, "Why not?" And that led to Charlie trying to explain the concept of "guy code" to her for the next fifteen minutes, until they said goodbye.

( * * * )

Saisha waited until a few months passed to ask again. "Mom, tell me more about Jacob Black."

Bella flinched at the name, and then tried to hide her frown behind her laptop screen. Saisha could still see the way her eyebrows furrowed, though. "What do you want to know?"

"What did you do that was wrong? You said that you wondered if he'd forgiven you for the way you treated him. But you're really nice."

Bella laughed weakly. "I'm glad you think so, honey, but I wasn't a very nice person to Jacob."

This was the part that Saisha didn't understand. Her father had seemed to blame himself entirely in his letter. He hadn't mentioned any way in which her mom was at fault. "Are you sure? What happened?"

Bella hit a couple of buttons, and then closed her laptop screen to look at Saisha. "I told you he was a werewolf." At Saisha's nod, she continued, "So he was a born enemy to your father, even though the Cullens didn't kill humans, usually. It was in Jacob's nature to hate all vampires. And… your father gave him other reasons not to be his biggest fan. I never mentioned it, but your father and I broke up for a while back before we were married."

Careful to keep her tone surprised, Saisha asked, "You did? Why? Were you tired of him protecting you?"

Bella snorted. "No, honey. He was trying to keep me safe, and thought that breaking up with me was the way to do it."

Saisha thought about it, remembering Edward's letter. "Because then you wouldn't be around vampires all the time?"

"Exactly. He was right, but he went about it the wrong way and made me think it was my fault. I was really young, and romantic, and not very good at relationships, and I took it pretty hard. I got very depressed. I started… losing time. I didn't have any friends because I didn't want to talk to anybody and half the time, I wouldn't notice when they talked to me. I knew Jacob before, because our dads were friends of course, and we saw each other every once in a while, but we hadn't hung out in years. Then, one day, I had some, uh, mechanic work that I needed done, and I remembered he was good with machines, so I headed up to La Push." A wistful smile dawned on her face. "He was really kind to me. I had forgotten how to laugh, but he made me feel happy without even trying."

"What did you two do together?"

"I watched him work on the motorbikes I bought. They were just hunks of junk at first, but he was a genius. We rode them together after he fixed them. We did homework. We talked a lot. It was so easy to talk to him. Most of the time I have a hard time carrying on a conversation, you know, but I never had to work at it with Jake."

"Then what happened?" Even though she already knew, Saisha wanted to hear it from Bella's point of view.

"I did something stupid, and Aunt Alice saw in one of her visions. She thought I was trying to kill myself."

Swallowing hard, Saisha asked, "Were you?" Suicidal ideation wasn't unheard of for lovelorn teenagers, she knew that much, but picturing her mother in that position was... difficult.

Bella shook her head. "I'm not sure. Back then, I would have told you no, but back then, I was the opposite of self-aware. Anyway, your aunt saw me jump off a cliff in La Push, but she didn't see Jacob pull me out because she can't see shapeshifters. So, she thought I was dead because she didn't see me come out of the water. Your father wasn't living with his family at the time, but when he talked to your Aunt Rose, she told him I was dead, and he took off for the Volturi to ask them to kill him."

"_Why_?" Utterly bewildered, Saisha walked to sit at her mother's feet. "I don't understand this story."

"I know it doesn't make much sense, but, your father was permanently stuck in a teenager's way of thinking, and teenagers are emotionally immature compared to adults. He thought he couldn't live without me being in the world." Bella stroked Saisha's hair. "Aunt Alice came to help Charlie, thinking I was dead, and when she found out I wasn't, and that Ed—your father was trying to commit suicide, she begged me to help her save him. I did, but I ruined my friendship with Jacob. He was afraid I'd get back together with your father, and he was right. I did."

Pressing her face to Bella's leg, Saisha closed her eyes to better focus on her mother's physiological response to the next question. "Are you sorry you did?"

"No, because if I hadn't, I wouldn't have you, and there were other good things that happened because of you being born. Things that affected the whole world for the better." Bella's heart rate remained steady, her voice calm. Some of the tension evaporated from Saisha's shoulders. "But I'm very sorry for how my behavior affected Jacob. When I chose to go back to your father, I was choosing to die. I made your father promise to turn me into a vampire. He agreed in return for marrying me, which was something I didn't want at _all._"

Saisha jerked her head up to stare at Bella in shock. She hadn't believed that part of her father's letter. "You really wanted to be a vampire?"

Bella laughed, but tears glittered in her eyes. "I know it's hard to believe, since I've been trying to teach you the reverse of vampire behavior since the day you were born, but yeah. I wanted to be a vampire. It wasn't just an idea I came up with because of my pregnancy with you. Jacob saw that decision as killing myself, and he was right. My heart would have stopped. It made him crazy. He acted… out of character; let's just put it that way. It happens, when someone you love is threatening to commit suicide."

Saisha tried to imagine what that would look like, and failed. "What did he do?"

Bella bit her lip. Saisha could hear her heart begin to pound faster. "Our behavior didn't reflect very well on either of us. I'd rather not get into it."

"I know you said it was a bad idea to contact him again, but, did you ever think about maybe writing him a letter, or emailing him, and letting him know you were sorry?" Bella was big on apologies when Saisha had wronged someone; she couldn't imagine her mother not practicing what she preached.

"I have, but I think it might hurt him all over again. In the end, I think the best thing for Jacob Black is if he never has to hear from me, so he can forget all about what happened. Hopefully he's moved on, gotten married, has a couple of kids and a great career and never thinks of me at all."

That was a lie, but Saisha didn't call her on it. She liked being able to tell when Bella was being dishonest, and if she pointed out the times her mother lied then Bella would simply start refusing to answer Saisha's questions.

"So." Bella gently grasped Saisha's chin and tilted her face up to search her eyes. "What brought up all these questions, Miss Saisha Charlene?"

Saisha blinked once, which gave her enough time to come up with a cover story. She focused on thinking only of her grandfather while she explained. "I was talking to Grandpa Charlie about Billy Black, and that made me curious about Billy's son. Did you know that there's a code for guys? And it means that you can't date a person you're interested in if your guy friend is interested in that person too? Isn't that strange? What if the person you're interested in is only interested in one of you? Why shouldn't that person be allowed to choose?"

"That person is allowed to choose, but sometimes, friendship is more important than romantic possibilities. A friendship is usually way more certain than a dating relationship, so most people opt for the sure thing."

Here was an opening. "What if you want to date a friend? Which do you choose?"

Bella evaded like an expert. "I don't have to choose. I don't date and I don't have close friends anymore. It's not a complication I can afford."

Saisha rolled her eyes, but let the matter drop.


	5. Ab Toh Mera Dil

**All the hugs to cretin for pre-reading and to FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for beta magic. FatedFeathers has made two beautiful banners for this story, and you should go to my LJ to squee over them. ;-) Song for this chapter: "Crush" by Jimmy Eat World.**

**# # #**

Saisha tried to avoid talking to her mother as much as she could get away with it over the next few months. Bella clearly knew something was up, but every time she touched Saisha, all she saw was Charlie and pictures of Washington State. They agreed to stay in their current home until it was time to go to the camp, but that didn't stop Saisha from learning all she could about their destination and imparting that information to her mother, right down to the final days of packing.

"It's got Internet! Wi-Fi, even."

"It probably works as well as the electricity did when we were in Tanzania," Bella grumbled, but got out her laptop bag.

"It rains between twelve and fourteen feet every year in the Hoh Rain Forest."

"Lovely. Maybe I'll mildew between my toes."

"I don't believe that's possible."

"I was using sarcasm, honey."

"Oh. Right. Sorry."

The next day: "It's so beautiful and green there."

"Brown was the color God intended for life in general."

"Why are you so determined to hate this place?"

"Because I _already _hate it, Saisha. That fact seems to have escaped your notice and I don't know why."

In point of fact, it hadn't—not much in the way of non-emotional information escaped Saisha's notice—but she was determined to ignore this particular bit of knowledge. When she said as much to Charlie on their next Skype session, he nodded and said, "You planning on staying in California till you come up?"

"I hadn't thought about it," she replied, startled. "Since you thought I shouldn't be near Mom, I'll probably just stay here, yes." She had always gone wherever Bella decided was home until now, so making plans otherwise was a foreign concept. It was just the way things were—the pair of them, together, forever.

_But it won't be forever, _her mind told her, not for the first time. She flinched away from the thought as always. Unthinkable, that she would be dependent on only her vampire family for companionship someday, without the cool, soft touch of her mother's hands. Without Bella standing as a shield from the depredations of incomprehensible, fascinating, wonderful humans.

Charlie nodded, and then said, "Well, Isha, I think you might wanna reconsider. It might be good for you to be in the same state anyway."

"I know about sex, Grandpa," Saisha said, confused. "I understand the privacy requirements. And weren't you the one who said it would go better if I weren't around?"

His face darkening with embarrassment, Charlie said, "Uh, yeah. Sure. Sure I did, honey. But at the same time, it'd be good for your mom to know you're not so far away. Plus, it's not just, um, privacy, it's the whole talking thing that's the problem."

Saisha considered what he was telling her. Bella never had a hard time talking to her, but she had noticed that her mother often became tongue-tied and awkward when speaking to other humans in casual social environments. It was possible she would perform better in a romantic situation without an interested observer during the proceedings, but she knew her mother tended to become slightly obsessive when she was concerned about Saisha. "Where should I go, then?"

"You can come stay at my place. Forks isn't very interesting but it's safe, and I'll be happier knowing the house has someone in it."

Wow. A whole house, all to herself, and no mother to keep an eye on her comings and goings? That sounded… interesting. Maybe appealing. "I can do that. What should I tell Mom?"

"Tell her you're going to cat-sit for me."

"You have a cat?" Saisha had never had a pet, mostly because she had accidentally eaten a piranha in a public aquarium when she was one year old. Not even Rosalie had been able to catch her. It was after that incident that Bella had decided they needed to head to the wilderness for a while.

"No, but I'll get one so it won't be a lie. I've been meaning to anyway. This place gets damn lonely but it'd be unfair for me to have a dog with all hours I work."

Poor Grandpa. It seemed unfair he had to live in an empty house. Much as she relished the notion of privacy, Saisha didn't want to imagine being forced to stay in that situation for longer than a few weeks. Charlie had been alone ever since Saisha's birth. Well, this would be a great opportunity for him to catch up with his daughter. "Okay. I'll wait until the last minute, though. I don't want her to start thinking it through too much or she'll figure me out. It usually doesn't take her very long. I think if she weren't dreading this trip so much she already would have realized I'm keeping something from her."

"You've been doing that last-minute thing a lot lately. If I were you I'd tell her now."

Saisha thought about that. "You might be right."

"I'll wait for you at my place and then head down with Jake and Billy."

"Jacob's father goes with you too?"

"We hadn't planned on it, but yeah, this go-round Jake doesn't trust Billy to follow his doc's instructions if he's by himself, so he's coming. Should be fun."

"All right. I'll let Mom know plans have changed." After a moment of silence, Saisha decided the call must be over. "Goodbye, Grandpa."

"Isha, wait." When she obediently paused her finger over the mouse button, Charlie sighed and fidgeted with his coffee mug. "You know, even if Jake and your mom get together, there's a chance… He won't know what to make of you."

Wondering if her grandfather were speaking from experience, Saisha said, "I know. Aunt Alice said the same thing."

Charlie looked relieved. "I just don't want you to blame yourself if this doesn't work out, is all. A woman having a kid isn't a dealbreaker for most guys, but your deal is pretty unusual."

Saisha shook her head and said, "If he'd give up Mom because of me, he isn't worth the effort. It's better to find out sooner rather than later."

"Guess you're right. Bye."

"Goodbye."

After they hung up, Saisha wandered up to Bella's bedroom, where her mother was sorting through boxes of clothes.

"It's going to be summer." Saisha sat down and began separating long sleeves from short.

"It still gets cold at night, and being soaked to the bone is never a warm feeling. How's Grandpa?"

Often, Saisha wondered why her mother and grandfather so rarely spoke, preferring instead to ask about each other's well-being. "He seems well. He told me something odd though. Apparently he volunteers at the same camp where you'll be working. The children who go there need to have different opinions of police officers and he's there to help that process."

Bella's eyes widened. "Your grandfather's going to be there? That's great!"

"And he asked me to house-sit."

Bella froze.

"By myself."

"Oh." Mechanically, Bella folded a shirt to set it aside. "Oh."

"You don't have a problem with that, do you?" Saisha had learned long since that presenting something as a _fait accompli _was far more effective with her mother than asking permission. "You keep saying I'm an adult now."

"You're eight," Bella said in a flat voice.

"For my species, I've reached full maturity." Saisha put an equal number of both sorts of shirts into her mother's suitcase. She liked symmetry. Even her face was perfectly symmetrical, down to the last millimeter, something which never failed to fascinate Carlisle.

"There aren't enough of you to have a standard for that."

This, Saisha knew, was playing dirty, but if her mother ended up happy then it would all be justified. "Don't you think it's smart for me to practice being alone? It is, after all, an eventuality."

Bella blanched.

After a moment of silence, she said, "That's a good point. Okay, then. I guess it's not really that far, and if anything goes wrong you'll be able to contact me with no problem. I don't know what I was thinking; it's much more sensible than you staying in the nearest hotel."

"Exactly. Besides, I've read that parents need distance from their children sometimes. You never have more than a few miles."

With a laugh, Bella added a few pairs of jeans to the suitcase. "Somehow, I've never found anyone who understood the circumstances of my life as well as my child. Well, not since I was practically a kid myself . . . ." She trailed off, but her lips pursed in the way they usually did when she was remembering something painful. "Anyway, it's a worthwhile experiment. I'll miss you, though."

"I'll miss you too," Saisha replied honestly. "But maybe you'll have fun with your new coworkers."

( * * * )

"Dad!" Jacob yelled from inside the trunk of his LeSabre. "I'm leaving with you in ten minutes, and I don't give a rat's ass if you got all your shit or not!"

Normally, Jacob considered himself a decent son. He did his best to be respectful, even when confronted with a cantankerous old man who half the time refused to take care of himself and the other half got mad at his son for doing the job for him. He even drove an old person's car so his dad would have room for his wheelchair in the trunk, no matter how it chafed his pride. However, when he was trying to get to a "vacation" that was, despite its beautiful surroundings, actually a lot of hard work, and Billy was making the trip doubly difficult even before they had pulled away from their home, Jacob's always-short fuse frayed into near-oblivion. His phone buzzed again; probably his partners from the garage calling to ask yet another question he'd already answered ten times.

"I just want my wood-carving tools; is that too much to ask?" Billy demanded from inside the little red house.

"Yes, if it's going to make us even later! Charlie's been waiting for the last twenty minutes!" Jacob rearranged everything once more to make sure there was enough room for Charlie Swan's bag. "Hasn't even whittled a stick in five years, and decides he wants to pick it up again ten minutes before we walk out the door," he grumbled to Leah, who leaned against the side and watched with obvious amusement.

"Hey, maybe he'll keep out of your way if he has something to occupy his hands." She waited till he stood straight and then leaned to ruffle his hair. "It's getting longer."

"Yeah, well, I only have to phase every other night or so, nowadays."

"Thanks to me." Leah hooked one of her fingers in the belt loop of his shorts and pulled him closer until his body pinned hers against the car door.

"Thanks to you," Jacob agreed, looking into her thick-lashed eyes and grinning. "What do you want, Clearwater?" Despite his hurry, he pushed into her a little. Not much was soft about Leah's athletic body, but it yielded to him in all the best ways when she felt like it.

"I want some time away when you get back." Leaning up to nuzzle his neck, she added, "I've got a life off the rez too, you know, and I'm not just talking about my apartment."

"Believe me, I know. Are you still dating that guy, whatshisname . . . ."

She pushed back and gave him an insulted glare. "If I was, would I be doing this?" She circled her hips as if making a point. "I don't cheat, even if it would get me my own way."

"Okay, okay, sorry," he soothed, kissing his way across her jaw to her ear. "Just wanted to see if my favorite fuckbuddy's back on the market."

"Your only fuckbuddy. Face it, Jacob, you're born for monogamy. Too bad I'm not." Despite her acerbic tone, her hands were gentle as they worked their way under his shirt and caressed his back. "When you get done with your annual adventure in do-gooding, we'll see. Depends on if I hook up with anybody while you're gone."

"If it's a girl I want all the details." Jacob slid his hands down to her ass to pull her more tightly to him. "_All _of them. Make some up if you have to."

Chuckling, she kissed his collarbone. "It was just _once. _I think if she didn't expand my horizons then no one will, sorry. I guess one bisexual Clearwater is the limit for your pack."

"I'm not dreaming about Seth offering himself, if that's what you mean."

Her crack of laughter was interrupted by Billy's querulous voice. "Get the hell off of her and help me get this into the car, Jacob!"

Jacob rolled his eyes and released his beta. "Sure, Dad. No problem."

"Want me to get that for you?" she joked in an undertone, eyeing his hard-on.

"Thanks, but I'll deal with it the same way I have for, I dunno, the past six months." He readjusted himself before turning. "All right, all right, I'm gonna help you; hold your horses, old man."

Leah wasn't about to let him off the hook without an answer. "So. Time off when you get back?"

"We should be able to work it out. Ever since Embry took off for Key West it's been kind of hard, though." Jacob stepped up onto the porch and grabbed his father's toolbox. "Holy shit, Dad, it's a good thing I'm a werewolf. What the hell did you pack in here, a spare anvil or two? Mjölnir?"

"I need all of that. Don't you dare take any of it out."

Trying not to growl audibly, Jacob hefted the box and got it into the trunk, then came back for Billy. As he helped him into the car and folded the wheelchair, Leah said, "Don't have too much fun, now."

"Believe it or not, it is usually fun. I hope Charlie keeps Billy busy enough that he doesn't get too bored without TV."

"I got a TV," Billy said in surprise, sticking his head out the open window to look at them.

"Dad, there's no cable."

"I've got an old handheld set that uses an antenna. It should still work."

Ignoring the incredulous grin spreading across Leah's face, Jake elaborated, "Dad, it _won't_ work. The signal's different now than when that antique came out."

After a moment of silence, Billy's quiet, "Well, shit," made both Leah and Jake snort with suppressed laughter.

Stepping forward once again, Leah nipped Jacob's chin, wolf-fashion, and then kissed him quickly on the mouth. "Don't worry. I've got this handled. You go show the brats how to act human."

"Kind of ironic, all things considered," he pointed out, but got into the car and drove toward Forks without a backward glance. Leah was the one wolf—the one person—whom he completely trusted.

Charlie was his usual reserved self, opening the door to Jacob's knock with a, "Jake," and a nod, then carrying his bag to the LeSabre without further ado. An odd scent drifted out behind him, one that Jacob couldn't immediately pin down. As soon as Charlie settled into the back seat, despite Jacob's offer to let him drive, he struck up a conversation with Billy on the Mariners; their commiseration carried them through most of the trip. When they were about half an hour out from their destination, though, Charlie asked, "Heard from Becca? How's the kids?"

"Fine. They miss their dad, though. I told her it was a stupid idea to get married that young, but did she listen? No, and now the kids have to pay the price."

Jacob tried to keep his sigh quiet. Becca had been desperate to have an excuse not to ever come back to her father's unintentional tyranny. Even though it meant he'd been stuck with the dirty work, he couldn't blame her. Hell, hadn't he been proclaiming lifelong devotion at sixteen? At least Becca had waited till she was legal. And Ioane hadn't even been suicidal or anything. Further proof of her superior judgment.

"She give any thought to coming to see you?"

"She says it'd be easier for me to come out there. I don't know; she offered to pay half the ticket but it's a long-ass trip."

"I'm thinking it'd be worth it to see the grandkids in person instead of via Skype."

"You're probably right. Rachel says she'll come with me if I go during one of her school breaks."

"Well, at least you don't have to worry about a housesitter. I've got Isha up there to take care of my place."

Jacob almost swerved off the wet road and barely straightened the car before they went right past the rumble strips on the shoulder. "What the _hell_?"

"You okay, Jake?" Charlie leaned over the seat. "What's wrong?"

"You—your granddaughter is coming to _Forks_? To housesit? Are you—are you serious?" He still couldn't get his mind to wrap around the concept. "She's just gonna show up and—I mean, while you're _gone. _Don't you want to see her?"

"She's already there, and I will when I get back," Charlie replied, looking surprised at the questions.

"Isn't she only eight?" Billy interjected, giving Charlie an odd look. Jacob felt the same expression on his face. How much did Charlie know?

Charlie eluded the trap. "No, Bella just got her eight years ago. She's grown, pretty much. I had to have someone take care of the kitten."

"The kitten." Jacob suppressed a ludicrous urge to pinch himself. The entire day had taken on the quality of a dream. A really bad dream. Focusing on the most inessential aspect, he said, "You have a kitten."

"It's nice to have an animal around."

"I've noticed they make a big mess, myself," Billy said with a snide glance at Jacob, but his son wasn't paying any attention.

"When's she getting there?"

"She's already here."

"Is she—is her mother going to come too?" Shit, shit, he'd have to call Leah, he'd have to tell the pack, maybe he shouldn't have left at all—

"No. Bells can't come. She's busy."

Of course she was. Busy ripping out the throat of a member of an endangered species, probably, or being rich and cold and stone-hearted someplace cloudy and forgetting how the sun felt on her skin. And sending the spawn that had murdered her, the _real _her, to visit so her father wouldn't figure out the truth: his daughter was dead. "Right." So it wasn't as bad as it could have been. One bloodsucker as opposed to the entire Cullen coven. "I have to make a phone call. Let's stop at this gas station."

The older men got out and wandered around while Jacob called Leah on speed dial. It went straight to voice mail. He didn't leave a message, but instead hit the end button and thought over his options, before punching in Seth's number.

"Hey, Jake!" came the cheerful greeting within seconds. "What's up? Hey, I thought you were supposed to be at that camp in—"

"I am," Jake cut him off. "Listen, Seth, I need you to do me a favor, and not tell Leah about it."

"She won't like that. She's sleeping in her old room, Jake; don't make me make her mad, c'mon."

"Tell her I Alpha-ordered you. Hell, I will if it makes it easier on you."

"Nah, she can bite a chunk out of me. It'll just grow back. What do you need?"

Thank fuck for the one easygoing member of the pack. Heaving a sigh of relief, Jacob said, "Charlie's granddaughter's come to Forks, and she's gonna be staying at his place. I need you to go see her and lay down the law. Make sure she understands about the treaty and that she's not allowed to set foot past the boundary line, and it wouldn't hurt if you scared her a little."

Dead silence, and then, "Holy _shit_! This is so kickass! Hell, yes, I'll do it. Can I snap at her? Tell me I can snap at her."

"No, wait." Jacob backpedaled. "You need to tell her that we're renegotiating the treaty, actually. This is perfect because she's really young; we can bulldoze her. I mean, she's only eight, even though Charlie said she's old enough to take care of his house. Guess there was something weird about the way she grew."

"Surprise."

"Yeah, no shit. Tell her no more restrictions on where we can phase, either, and no visitors with red eyes or we'll take them down regardless of whether or not they're there to see her."

"Got it. Lay down the law. Redefine the treaty. Scare her. Maybe get to kill some bad leech spawn. You picked the wrong time to be gone, Jake. This is gonna _rock_."

Despite himself, Jacob grinned. "Yeah, yeah. Rub it in. If I miss killing a vampire I'm gonna be pissed. You guys better give me the play-by-play. Maybe I can phase while I'm down here and check in."

"I dunno if the link'll stretch that far, but it's worth a shot. Okay, no worries, bro. I'll take care of everything with the demon spawn. What's her name?"

"I, uh—" He tried to remember, and couldn't. Whenever Charlie brought up the subject he tried to tune out as thoroughly as possible. "I think Charlie calls her Isha but that might just be a nickname. Introduce yourself, I guess, and hope she returns the favor without trying to break your neck."

"Will do. Have fun with the delinquents."

Jacob laughed. "They're not that bad, Seth."

"They _set fire to your bed,_ Jake."

"It was just a joke. They knew I'd wake up before it got bad."

"Whatever. Talk to you later."

Once Billy and Charlie returned, he got behind the wheel and hit the road again, feeling much better about life in general and the safety of the rez in particular. Before long they turned onto the winding gravel lane that would take them to the campsite, where a couple hundred kids would already be making their counselors nuts. The wave of sound smacked into his ears first. One final bend in the road, and Jacob grinned, because the organized chaos that met his gaze was exactly what he'd been hearing: buses with doors gaping open, kids with duffel bags slung over their shoulders milling around in confusion, counselors standing with clipboards held overhead, shouting to get their attention, and drivers of the buses yelling to each other to try to coordinate where they would park while the constant creaking of the screen doors swinging open and banging shut underpinned everything else.

Jacob didn't have to worry about parking: he got a spot in front of the administrator's office, and since his dad was with him, he got a whole six feet closer with the handicapped space. Hanging the blue tag from the rearview mirror, he said, "Charlie, why don't you and Dad get settled and I'll go see what's up." Charlie walked around and got out the wheelchair once Jacob popped the trunk. When Billy was seated, he dropped their suitcases in his friend's lap despite his vocal complaints and pushed him off toward the cabin they'd be sharing.

"Jacob Black!" The director of the camp, Karen Jones, looked up from her computer screen as soon as he walked in and grinned. "About time you got here."

"How're you doing, Karen?" he asked.

She walked around and pulled him into a maternal hug, saying, "Oh, you know. Crazy busy, just like always, but that's how I like it." Pulling away, she smoothed down her pale blond curls. "I'm all rumpled. You ready to get started or do you need a minute?"

"I'm good. I'll get settled later on. Where do you want me?"

"You said on your forms that you'd be willing to coordinate the sports for everyone again this year. Is that still right?" At his nod, she continued, "Good. Here's the keys to the shed." She handed them over. "We've decided that for some of the kids, they'll have their counseling appointments during that same time, so you need to get the list of who's going to be gone on which days from the new therapist. I'm really excited about her; we got a grant to cover her salary for the first time this year. Anyway, you'll have to talk to her about the list."

Jacob nodded. "Cool. Where am I headed? What's her name?"

"She's in Annex 2. Her name's… Oh God. It just flew right out of my head. Mohammed did the hiring so I've never even met her. I can look it up if you want me to." She turned a despairing eye toward the files fanning out across her desk.

"No, it's fine. I'll go introduce myself now and see what we've got before I check out the equipment. Good to see you again." Jacob waved a goodbye and headed out the door toward the right building, stopping every few feet to greet returning campers he recognized or direct newbies. It was a good twenty minutes before he finally entered Annex 2. When he did, he immediately saw the shiny new "Counseling" plate up on one of the doors, which was cracked open. Pushing it a little farther in, he knocked and said, "Hey, I'm—"

And that was when he had to clutch at the door frame as all the air went _whoosh_ing out of his lungs, because the woman who turned away from an open filing cabinet to greet him was none other than Bella Swan.


	6. Kya Karoon Haaye

**Hey, it's Tuesday where I am. Inappropriately eager expressions of affection for FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for their beta magic and to cretin for prereading the mess. Song for this chapter: "7 Days" by Butterfly Effect.**

**# # # **

Bella dropped the files as all the color drained out of her face—she had _color_, she had _blood_—and gasped, "Jake!" Clutching the edge of her desk like she might fall without it, she stared at him.

"I—I—" The buzzing in his ears grew louder until it sounded like an alarm bell. He gave up on talking and just looked at her, trying and failing to believe what he saw right there in front of him. It was easier to believe what he didn't see, or smell. No odor of bleached flowers assaulted his nostrils. No marble skin sparkled in the sun. No golden eyes, or worse, red, blinked too regularly in confusion. His knees felt like they were going to give out underneath him. "You're not a vampire," he finally croaked, and then felt stupid.

She didn't laugh, though, or do anything except breathe out, "No," and hang onto her desk.

Moving with caution, he released the door jamb and stepped toward her, gaze falling to her left hand despite himself. No wedding ring. No monstrosity of an engagement ring, either. Knuckles white from the strength of her grip, but that meant she was _human_, perfectly, wonderfully human… She released the desk long enough to make an abortive gesture toward him, and then returned her hand to the desk as if she would lose her balance without it.

Jacob reached out and, with one finger, touched the back of the wrist closest to him.

Warm.

The buzzing faded, and her heartbeat filled the empty space in his ears.

"Bella," he whispered. "Bella, I thought you were _dead._"

"I'm sorry. I'm not," she said, just as soft-voiced. "Jake, what are you doing here?"

Indignation rushed in, much more comforting and familiar than total shock. "What am _I _doing here? I come here every year! I have since I was eighteen. I think a better question is, why are _you _here?"

"I didn't know you were here," she blurted. "I'm sorry. I'll go."

"No." He grabbed her elbow without meaning to, and just as quickly released it when she winced. "No. I want answers. Why are you here? Why is that thing up in Forks?" How was she not _dead_? No. No. _Don't think about it, don't think about it._

"That… that thing?" she asked, confused all over again. Her face went dark with rage before he could answer. "Don't you_ dare _call my daughter a 'thing,' Jacob Black."

_How about monster, or demon spawn, then? _he almost suggested, but stopped just in time. Calling her names wouldn't help anything right now. "I'm sorry. Why is _she _up in Forks?"

Bella's color faded again, and she shook her head. "I'm not sure. At a guess, hiding from my wrath. I wonder if she knew you'd be here."

"How could she have? Oh, shit, can she see the future too?" He was going to have to call Seth again.

"No, no. But she was asking about you a few months back… I don't know, maybe I'm giving her too much credit. She said she just wanted some time on her own and Charlie offered to let her cat-sit."

"But she's only eight!"

Bella gave him the look, the _I know that, dummy, _look that he remembered so well. His heart twisted oddly in his chest at the sight. "She's full-grown. Apparently that's normal for—" Glancing around, she leaned closer and said even more quietly, "—for vampire-human hybrids."

Jacob heard his voice come out flat. "There are more than one." From the look on Edward's face when he'd talked about Bella's pregnancy, he had been certain it was a singular occurrence. How _could _she have survived something—_don't think about it._

"Just a few. Enough to draw some conclusions. Actually it took her a little longer to finish growing than most because she was a preemie. Jake, I'm sorry, I just wanted a job and this one looked good. I didn't know that you would be working here too. I'll leave, though."

His thoughts flailing like a climber sliding down a glacier, Jacob found a mental foothold in a minor detail. "I don't work here. I volunteer."

Bella's forehead creased with puzzlement. "Okay… does it matter? Either way it would be bad for me to stay."

"No." If she left he'd have lost. He wasn't sure what the game was but he knew being weak enough to demand her absence meant losing. Besides, "The kids need a counselor and they'll never get another this late in the game. You need to stay."

"That's true," she admitted, clearly unhappy about the fact. "This is going to be so awkward."

"It's only as awkward as we let it be," Jacob replied. His resolution strengthened as he spoke. All those questions he was currently fighting off didn't have to be asked. He could just pretend she was... well, he couldn't pretend, but he could ignore for the sake of his sanity. _Just don't think about it and you'll be okay. _"Look, we're both here for a reason, and that reason is the kids. Let's just focus on that and let the rest fall into place. We can be professional or whatever. After all, we're not even exes."

"Right. Not even exes," she echoed. Looking down, she played with the corner of a file, shining hair falling to shield her face from his view. It smelled like that tea Rachel always drank at bedtime, and there was a streak of silver shooting from the crown of her head to the nape of her neck. "I guess you're right. Sorry. I panicked."

And her first reaction to panic was to run. Or maybe her first reaction to him was to run. Even now. The old bitterness roiled, black and deep, but Jacob knew by now how to still the emotions he couldn't afford to let loose, and he'd found a measure of peace over the course of eight and a half years. So, he stooped down to pick up the papers she had dropped and then handed them back to her, saying, "It's understandable. The reason I came over in the first place was to ask you about appointments for the kids. I'll be doing sports coordination and coaching for them during the course of the day, and some of them'll be coming to you during the time scheduled for me. Do you have a list of kids for me?"

"Sure." She fanned through the papers. Two of her fingers were crooked now, obvious victims of a break at some point after she'd left Forks. "Here you go. Do you have time to talk about the kids you know, right now? Maybe give me a heads-up on any of them?"

Despite himself, Jacob was intrigued by the quick switch from vulnerable woman—who bore a passing resemblance to the girl he'd known—and Bella the Real Live Therapist, complete with Business Voice. Giving himself a mental slap, he said, "I can later. I've gotta check the equipment, see what got molded or eaten during the off-season. Lights-out is at nine. We'll all be on table duty during dinner and probably the regular counselors could use a hand getting everyone settled for bed, but you can come over to the accessible cabin after. That's where your dad and Billy and I are staying."

"Great. I'll see you then."

Jacob started to head to the shed that held the athletic equipment, but halfway there he changed his mind and began looking for Charlie. He caught up with the older man near the lake, pulling a couple of first-graders away from the dock while issuing promises that they'd all go swimming soon. Jacob waited until they had run off to join the rest of their group at their dorm, and then said, "Charlie, you knew and you didn't tell me?"

Charlie shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about, Jake."

Fighting the urge to shake him, Jacob demanded, "Why the hell didn't you let me know Bella would be here? You had to know!"

"Of course I knew, son. I just figured you'd check the list of personnel same as I do every year."

That was too hard to believe, given Bella's shock at seeing him. "No way. No. Way. Bella didn't know I'd be here either and I can't believe you wouldn't have mentioned it to her unless you were trying to hide it. What the hell is going on in your head, Charlie? Do you even know—of course you don't. How could you know?"

Now it was Charlie's turn to get in his face, or as close as he could considering Jacob stood half a foot taller. An unfamiliar flush reddened the high cheekbones as he gritted through his teeth, "Don't you patronize me, Jacob Black. I was solving crimes back when you were in diapers. You really think I didn't know that the entire Cullen family was like our own local Area 51? Think again. Bella's so damned stubborn I knew if I pushed, I'd lose her, and I'd already lost out on most of her life. My granddaughter is a grown woman at eight years old. They tried to feed me some bullshit about her being adopted but she's got her mother's eyes, and I've missed out on _her _life too because Bella still doesn't trust me to handle it. She planned on this job before she ever knew I was going to be here and I wasn't about to talk her out of it. This is the first time I'm going to see Bella in person in years, so I'm sorry if I don't give a good goddamn about your hurt feelings. I've got bigger fish to fry. Now excuse me. I'm going to go hunt down my daughter."

Having delivered the single longest speech he'd ever given in the entire quarter-century Jacob had known him, he pushed past and stalked away.

In a daze, Jacob began walking toward the shed again. He hadn't really considered how much Charlie had lost when the Cullens left town, never to be seen again. Whenever he thought about that entire period, his memories blurred from sheer self-defense. The clear ones, the ones he'd kept despite himself, were mostly the ones he _should _have shoved the deepest. Not once had he stopped to wonder what Charlie had thought about all the weird injuries and odd hours and unnatural boyfriends and early marriage. He'd been too wrapped up in Bella, and, afterwards, in trying to forget about Bella.

_She's got her mother's eyes…_

Except Bella's eyes had a few wrinkles fanning out from their corners now.

_Don't think about it._

He was so preoccupied that he almost walked right past his destination, but once he realized where he was, the routine inspection sufficiently kept his attention till the dinner bell. After that, table supervision completely occupied his time. Some of the kids had no idea what to do with the sides they were offered, but they took them anyway and then surreptitiously tried to put the food in their pockets or other places. Jacob caught one of the little boys sitting next to him trying to hide his dinner roll under his shirt.

The first time he'd volunteered, he hadn't known how to handle something like this, but fortunately the other adults had trained him before he'd done any damage. "Hey, buddy." It was too soon to touch him; a lot of the kids had learned the hard way that grown-ups often didn't mean well. Jacob settled for hunching down at the boy's eye level. "I'm Jacob. What's your name?"

"Eli," he replied, face blank. His fingers twisted and turned, constantly wringing, while he looked at Jacob.

"Are you saving that bread for later, Eli?"

After a long hesitation, Eli nodded with obvious reluctance.

"Okay. C'mon, let's get a container for you so the bugs don't eat it. We try to keep the dorms bug-free but we're in the middle of the woods here, so food makes them want to come inside." Getting up, he led Eli to the kitchens, where one of the staff found a box for the roll. Jacob folded the tabs in and handed the box to Eli. "There you go. You can put that in your backpack or wherever you think it's safe, okay?"

Eli clutched the box to his chest and nodded again, then headed off to re-join the rest of the group. Jacob glanced across the mess hall and met Bella's gaze. She was sitting next to her dad, but they weren't speaking. Charlie was too occupied answering all the queries that began with "Chief Charlie! Chief Charlie!" from what Jacob could hear. Bella raised one hand and waved, then put it down in a hurry. Unsure of how to respond, Jacob shrugged. He spent the rest of the meal pretending to be extremely absorbed in what the kids were saying until pretense became a reality.

After dinner, he organized an impromptu game of touch football for any of the older kids who were interested, which was always fun in the loosest sense of the word, since this early in the camp, a lot of them weren't interested in paying attention to the "touch" part of the rules. He had to break up a couple of scuffles and bench a few kids, but most of the rest were returning campers and took his warnings seriously. By the time forty-five minutes had passed, they had started acting halfway like teams, but by then the counselors were calling for them to get ready for bed. Jacob helped wrangle them into their dorms, busted a couple of almost-drug-deals behind the buildings, confiscated the pot and gave them their single warnings, and then sent them on their way.

"Lights-out at nine" in reality translated to "lights-out around nine-thirty," and so it was nearly ten by the time Jacob returned to the cabin. Inside, he could hear Charlie and Billy arguing over the Sounders game on the radio. He hesitated outside the screen door, debating whether or not to join them, but heard steps with a slight shuffle approaching. Turning, he saw Bella, obviously unable to spot him since the light next to the front door was burned out. She stopped and looked around in confusion, examining the different buildings.

"Bella."

Instantly her head turned toward him. "Jake. Hey." She started walking again, still with that very small catch in her step.

"Are you okay?" Stupid. Why should he care?

"Yeah, why?" Stopping next to him, she craned her neck back. "God, you're big. Did you grow after… you know, after?"

After. That was one way to put it. It was true; his life was delineated by _before Bella _and _after Bella_, almost as much as it was by _before the accident _and _after the accident_. The reasons behind the growth weren't anything he wanted to get into right now. "A little bit. You're limping."

"Oh, that." Sinking down onto the bench against the outside wall, she sighed. "That was from when I was pregnant. Or actually, when she was born. She broke my pelvis." Catching herself, she added, "Accidentally."

Jacob sat down beside her. "Okay." _Don't think about it._

"Yeah. So, about these kids…" She offered up a list of names on a clipboard. "I'm assuming you can read this in the dark, but my eyes aren't mutated, so do you think we can turn on a light?"

"We'll get eaten alive by bugs," he said, trying to sound apologetic though he wasn't. He liked being able to see her when she couldn't see him. It gave him the illusion of having an advantage. "We could go inside with our dads."

As he'd expected, she was quick to nix that idea. "No, no, it's fine. Just try and write so I can read it."

_Are you insulting my handwriting? _he was tempted to tease, but caught himself before he gave in to the impulse. Professional. Not friends. The problem was, he was usually friendly with everyone, including the people he worked with. Picking up the pen attached to the clipboard by a string, he started down the list.

"I limited it to people who were returning campers, so you should recognize most of the names."

"Yeah. A lot of these are the stuff you'd expect to see. Anxiety, depression, anxiety, depression. What sucks is most of them have good reason to feel that way and they're headed straight back. A couple have ODD, I think, but you'd have that diagnosis on file. Oh." He paused. "Surinder." At her questioning look, he elaborated, "Surinder Dhillon. He's a hard one."

Bella raised her eyebrows. "Violent?"

"No, no. He's little and cute. No, he just doesn't talk. I mean, ever."

"Huh. Well, that'll make our sessions a challenge." Bella sighed. "It feels silly, giving them this for just three months. I have to wonder how much difference it'll make in the long run, even though teens are supposed to respond really quickly and make permanent change, blah blah blah."

Jacob swallowed. There were so many things he could say to that, and every single one would come out sounding like he was referencing their past.

Seeming to sense his discomfort, Bella changed the subject. "So anything that their files aren't going to tell me that you'd know? You're kind of their coach; I bet the boys talk to you at least."

"Mm, some of them. But most of my info's out of date by now. After all, it's been months since I saw them."

She took the clipboard back. "Right. Well, how about you keep me posted on stuff? I'm not asking you to break any confidences they share, just, you know, maybe steer me in the right direction if you feel okay about it."

"Yeah, sure. That should be doable." Of course, it would also mean that he wouldn't be able to avoid her, but that was a laughable idea anyway. They were in a remote camp with approximately one adult to every ten kids, and half those adults were only a year older than the high school seniors. He would be thrown together with Bella, over and over again, for weeks. The thought was incredibly depressing. Hell, maybe _he _should be the one to leave.

He couldn't. He was committed, and the kids had been let down by the adults in their lives so frequently. With all the promises for future games he'd already made, he'd be a real bastard to just take off at this point. Heaving a deep sigh, he stood, rubbing his palms on the thighs of his shorts. "You'd better get back to your bed. Wake-up's at six-thirty."

"Ugh. That's criminal." Bella stood too, clutching the clipboard to her chest. "Um… see you in the morning, then. I, uh…" Trailing off, she peered at his face. "Jake, I…"

"Yeah?" If she said _it was nice to see you again _he would start laughing and probably not stop until he started crying.

"Thanks for being willing to help."

"That's why I'm here," he replied, and retreated away from the cabin before she could say anything else.

( * * * )

"That's terribly awkward," Saisha said critically after Charlie turned his iPhone away from the window and back toward his face. "They're not progressing at an acceptable rate. We're on a very limited schedule here."

"I know that, Isha, but the fact of the matter is these things can't be rushed." Charlie sat down and sighed.

Billy stuck his head into the shot. "Hey, Saisha. I'm Jake's dad."

Saisha stiffened. "Hello, Mr. Black."

"Call me Billy. So. You want my boy to get together with your mom, huh?"

Saisha turned an accusing gaze toward Charlie, who shrugged. "I can't not tell him, Isha. It's his business too."

"Some might say it's only Jacob Black's and my mother's business," she pointed out.

"Anybody who says that obviously has no family," Billy said in dismissal. "So. Saisha. Here's the deal. Your mom made some bad choices back before you were born and it about broke my son's heart. It took him a long time to get better. You want to tell me why I shouldn't warn him what you're trying to do?"

Saisha thought, and then offered, "Because he is an adult who's capable of forming his own, rational opinions based on the evidence of his senses?"

"Bullshit," Billy replied. "He's an idiot. It's a Black family trait, especially regarding our relationships with the opposite sex."

Trying again, Saisha said, "Because he's lonely and wants to form a lasting relationship with a woman?"

"I'd rather him be alone for the rest of his life than be married and miserable."

"Hmm." Saisha considered the matter for a few moments, and then, thinking of her father's letter, said, "Maybe because he needs closure?"

Billy nodded, forehead wrinkled. "That's a decent point." A pause, and then, "Okay. I won't say anything to him. But don't expect me to help you out."

"I hadn't expected you to be there at all, so it's not as if I expected your assistance."

"She doesn't mean it to be rude," she heard Charlie mutter from off-screen, probably thinking he was being too quiet for her to hear.

Startled, Saisha said, "I'm sorry, was that impolite? I just wanted to assure you that I didn't expect anything from you."

Peering at the screen, Billy examined her face, and then said, "Well, it was good to talk to you."

"I'm glad to have met you." What would it be like to have _three _grandfathers? Would Billy Black be willing to accept the Swan females into his family? This was an issue she had yet to consider. For that matter, Jacob Black had two sisters. How would _their _opinions weigh with him? These webs of human relationships were so difficult to untangle.

"Listen, Grandpa," she said. "I think maybe they should have a reminder of happier times. They did have some before my dad came back from Italy, right? At least, that's what Mom said."

"A few, but I wasn't there for most of them. I remember the first day they hung out, they came out from his garage holding hands. That was the first time your mom let anybody touch her in months. I couldn't believe my eyes. I heard them arguing about how old they were sometimes when he'd come over to our place. A lot, actually."

Saisha tilted her head in puzzlement. "Arguing about how old they were? He was sixteen and she was eighteen, right?"

"Yeah, but Jake wanted to make the point that your mom wasn't too old for him, I think. So if he'd do something like, say, fix her truck, he'd say that would add a few years to his age. They'd argue over it all the time, just joking around, you know. Oh, and they rode those damned motorcycles."

"I don't think they have any motorcycles at the camp, do they?" At his head-shake in the negative, she said, "Then see if you can get them to play the age game. They need to remember how much they liked each other, I think. I hope. Why are you people all so confusing?"

Charlie laughed, but he looked sad, which was very contradictory and just went to prove her point. "Well, most of us can't figure ourselves out, Isha, so it's no surprise you can't either, especially after just eight years. I'll let you know how things are going."

"Thank you." Saisha clicked on "end call" and rose to go to the kitchen. The kitten, unimaginatively named Kitty, followed, purring and pouncing on her bare toes every step of the way. "You're very annoying and small," Saisha told her. "It's a good thing for you that I don't scratch easily. Or maybe it's a good thing for me? I wonder if I could talk to you mind-to-mind and tell you to…" She trailed off as a reflection in the woods caught her eye. Walking to the back door, she opened it and stood on the top step.

"Hello," she said to the man standing in the trees. "I've been expecting you."


	7. Na Jaane Kaisa Ehsaas Hai

**All the love to cretin for her pre-reading and FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for their beta'ing. Song for this chapter: "Firefight" by Jimmy Eat World.**

The man drew closer, his shoulders relaxing as he approached. Kitty almost darted out but Saisha scooped her up before she descended the steps.

"I'm Saisha, Bella Swan's daughter. Do—did you know her?" she asked, cradling the tiny animal against her chest.

The man nodded, eyes narrowed as he examined her from head to toe. "I did, yeah. My name's Seth Clearwater."

The faint animal tinge to his scent, though overall it was human enough to not be offensive, gave his true nature away. "You're one of the werewolf pack. From La Push, right?" Stepping back, Saisha gestured toward the open door. "Would you like to come in?" She didn't often have a chance to exercise her common human courtesies, but she liked taking advantage of any opportunity. "My grandfather has food in here."

Seth paused and looked her over again. Saisha tried to catalogue the marks of emotion she observed: eyebrows furrowed, lips pursed, gaze sharpened, upper body leaning away from her. Defensive? Afraid? Repulsed? Perhaps all three. His pulse was elevated, too. He was designed to kill vampires in his other form, but she didn't smell entirely vampire, so hopefully she wouldn't disgust him or incite him to violence. Trying again, she said, "I'm hungry too." He stiffened. "I'm going to have some frozen pizza. It's not very good but it's all he's got until I go shopping."

For whatever reason, that clarification made him relax. "Sure, I'd like some. Thanks." He followed her into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. "Cute kitten. Is it yours?"

"No, my grandfather's. He got her just before he left. I'm here to cat-sit while he's at camp." Saisha slid the pizza into the oven with her free hand and turned back toward him as he sat at the table.

"You're not going to set the timer? I always forget and burn 'em and my mom always tells me I should've set a timer." Seth smiled up at her, although it wasn't much of a distance. Even seated, he was close to Saisha's standing height, which she'd inherited from her mother. The expression made his already good-looking countenance even more appealing.

"I can keep count in my head," she explained, and the smile disappeared. That was sad, but she didn't know how to get it back. Best to keep talking and hope it came back. "Did Jacob Black send you?"

Seth's eyebrows rose when she mentioned the name. "He did, yeah. He's the Alpha of our pack."

"The one in charge." Saisha sat opposite him, putting the kitten down. "That means your pack has no leader while he's away?"

Seth snorted. "Oh no. He'd never do that. My sister Leah's taken over while he's gone."

"Then why is she not here?"

"Jacob couldn't reach her because she's patrolling, so he called me and asked me to come down. I probably should've done it sooner but I didn't have the car and—uh, I guess that's all beside the point." He shifted in his seat. "I'm supposed to tell you some things for Jacob, but, um... Wow, you're not what I expected. Are you really only eight years old?"

"I am," Saisha replied. "I've grown faster than humans because of my father. He was a vampire."

"I know that. I met your dad. We fought the newborns together before you were born."

Saisha sat up straighter in excitement. "I've heard that story! My Aunt Alice told me about it! It sounds very exciting."

The smile was back. "It was pretty kickass, yeah. We killed some bad lee—sorry, some bad vampires as a team, your dad and I."

Smiling in return, Saisha said, "You saved my mom's life. So you saved mine too. Thank you."

He seemed distracted, paying more attention to her face than to her words, but maybe werewolves did things differently from non-mutants and he was listening. "It was no big deal. I had a good time." A short pause, and then he abruptly redirected his gaze to the table. "Uh, so, that stuff Jacob sent me to talk to you about…"

"Right. I assume he has some strictures about my comings and goings. I'm not sure what sort of agreement you had with my father's family."

"Well, he wants to change that agreement. He wants us to be able to phase anywhere, not just on our land."

Saisha tilted her head in query. "Phase?"

"Turn into wolves."

"I don't know how I'd stop you regardless, but fine. Anything else?"

"You can't come on the pack's territory."

"Oh." Outside of Volterra, in the early days of her life, she'd never actually had someone ban her from their land before. It was an odd feeling. "Okay. I won't come to La Push."

"Our territory's a lot bigger than the rez. Reservation. I can show you where the treaty line is if you need me to. I'd hate for there to be any misunderstandings."

Saisha, still trying to figure out how she felt about being warned away, nodded absently. "That's nice of you. Thanks."

Seth fidgeted, glancing first at her, then back at the table. "Yeah. It's, um… It's nothing personal. It's just that vampires freak people out, and even if you only hunt animals, it's dangerous for you to kill near humans because of that feeding frenzy you guys do, you know? So we'd just rather you not kill near us."

"I won't. I'm not a vampire. I don't kill, at least not directly, and I don't hunt."

"You don't hunt? That's… you only eat human food?"

Saisha nodded. "My mother never let me have animal blood past my first week, not on purpose anyway, and I've certainly never been allowed human blood. She was afraid I would like it. So I've always eaten food. Sometimes she'll let me eat raw meat but it's only on special occasions."

With a grimace, Seth said, "Raw meat? I tried it once when I was really hungry, in my wolf form, but it was disgusting."

"Most humans don't care for it; I'm not sure why. It's healthier raw."

"No way. That's nasty." He jumped suddenly. "Ouch! That thing's got some claws on her."

Bending down, Saisha watched as he detached Kitty's claws from his skin. The tiny cuts welled up with blood, then scabbed over and healed before her eyes. "Rapid healing. That's very interesting."

"We get some cool side effects with the werewolf thing."

"I can see that. Was there anything else you were supposed to tell me?"

"Yeah. If you get any visitors with red eyes, we're going to go after them. We're not going to just sit by while they kill people, even if they're your friends."

Saisha almost laughed, but suppressed the sound for fear it would be rude. "You've got it all wrong. I don't have any friends who are that kind of vampire."

She had met them, though. Once or twice, when she was with her Cullen family. Visitors with red eyes and skin that smelled like copper and roses, ice and stone. They would coo over her like a pet or a prodigy, exclaim over her beauty and demand she think things at them, and inevitably the Cullens would ask her to oblige.

"Really? That's weird. And you don't expect any of your family either?"

"No. They almost never leave Italy anymore." Saisha sighed. "Maybe I should speak to Aunt Alice about undoing the treaty altogether, since they won't need it either. They're too busy." Governing the same red-eyed strangers, keeping them away from places like this. Very few of the immortals were willing to deny their true natures as the Cullens and Denalis did.

"Hey," Seth said, reaching to brush his fingers over the back of her hand. He jerked back. "Oh my God. What was—what was _that_? Did you make me think that?"

Uh-oh. "Think what? What did you see?" Reason number three why Saisha wasn't allowed to go out in public much: she had still never discovered a way to shield others from the constant telepathic feed that transmitted through her every pore.

"Vampires. With red eyes, and they… Hey, do it again." Saisha reached tentatively and placed one fingertip on top of his hand, thinking about the vampires. Seth nodded, eyes going wide. "That's so cool. I can _smell _them. But how they smell to you, not me, because they smell way more like bleach to us."

Hmm. So utterly off-putting, then. It must be hard to force themselves to bite down while fighting their one prey, in that case. "That's awesome. I haven't gotten to practice with humans, except my mom, and she never mentioned the scent. How do I smell to you?"

Waving his hand back and forth in a noncommittal fashion, he seemed to search for words. "Like… metal. But it's not bad. You smell kind of human, too. Definitely female. Like a metal-girl."

"You mean I smell like an android," Saisha said without inflection.

Seth burst into laughter. "Like _I, Robot_? That would be so awesome. I'll be Spooner. You can be Sonny."

Frowning, Saisha objected, "There was no character named Sonny in the short story collection."

With another laugh, Seth said, "I was talking about the movie. Haven't you seen it? I guess it's pretty old for someone your age. "

"I've never seen it, no."

Before Seth could reply, Saisha rose to lift the baking sheet out of the oven with her bare hands and flip off the dial.

"Holy shit, did you just—whoa. Your skin is really hard, huh?"

Leaving off her search for a pizza cutter, she turned to face him. "Not as hard as my father's, but definitely more durable than human skin." She held it out for his inspection. "See? More like alabaster than marble."

Seth flipped her hand back and forth with an impersonal touch. "Warmer than humans."

It was an odd sensation to feel soft human skin that wasn't cool against her own. "Not as warm as you, though."

"No." Releasing her from his grip, he looked in her eyes. "What a bunch of freaks, huh?"

He _understood. _Of course he did; he'd been weird and out of place since he was a teenager, if his growth pattern had followed that of Jacob Black's. He'd had the pack to welcome him, but they were a very limited number and bound by secrecy just as she was; perhaps even more so, because they didn't have the benefit of powerful rulers on their side. Being understood by someone in such a similar situation was a new feeling, and one Saisha hadn't known she longed for until she received it. Swamped with relieved gratification, she offered him a real smile, the one she usually reserved for her mother and her Cullen relatives.

The effect was instantaneous: Seth's eyes glazed, his mouth dropped open, his pupils dilated and his pulse rushed even faster through his veins while his hands clenched into fists on the table.

Oh. How embarrassing.

Bella had often warned Saisha about the effect she had on people—it was a hunting mechanism, inherited from her vampire half. "Everything about you draws them in, Saisha," she lectured, over and over again, until the knowledge had transitioned from a curious fact to a cautionary tale. "You need to be careful not to dazzle them, even more careful than vampires should be because you have natural color, and those dimples. It's not fair. It's not fair to any of us, because it's a form of mind control."

"It doesn't work on you," Saisha had said, not without resentment. It hardly seemed _fair_ that she had to act differently than she was designed to, just because humans were too weak to see her behavior for what it was.

Smiling, Bella had bent to kiss her forehead. "I'm your mother. I'm already dazzled by you. And… your father's effect was even more potent. I think I'm mostly immune now."

Seth was clearly not immune.

Saisha wiped her face clear of expression and turned back to the drawers, rummaging through their contents even after she realized there wasn't a pizza cutter, until his heart rate settled into what she assumed was normal for him. "I think I'll just have to use a knife here." After she cut the pizza into pieces, she set a plate in front of him with two slices on it and then took four slices for herself.

"Whoa. You eat almost as much as one of us."

Already with a mouthful of food, Saisha looked up in surprise. Once she swallowed, she said, "I do? Then what I gave you isn't enough. Would you like some more?"

"No thanks. I ate dinner before I came. It's kind of funny, though. I've never seen a girl who could put away food like that except my sister." He stuffed the pizza into his mouth so quickly she would have sworn he didn't chew, except clearly he must have done _something _to make it fit.

"She's in charge, you said. You assumed I was dangerous and came alone anyway. Why wouldn't you tell your leader?"

He shrugged and picked up his second slice. "She hates leeches. Vampires. I don't think she's gonna care that you're not one."

"You were worried she would hurt me?"

Seth looked at her askance. "Uh, no. I was worried you would hurt her, if she attacked you."

A moment of silence, and then Saisha pointed out, "My uncle Jasper, because he was turned near the end of the Civil War, has what he calls 'antiquated sensibilities' and often tries to protect my Aunt Alice due to the fact that she's female, even though she's just as capable as he is of taking care of herself. Maybe more so." Another bite of pizza. "She doesn't let him get away with it, but she understands, because vampires can't change their way of thinking very easily. Humans aren't the same, from what I've learned, so I don't think you have any such excuse."

Seth was laughing again. He seemed to do that a lot. Focusing on his pizza, he said, "Yeah, I don't think I do either, Sonny."

"Saisha."

He flashed a sideways smile at her and devoured his crust. "Whatever."

( * * * )

The next few days were some of the most awkward of Jacob's life.

He might have called them the _worst _of his life, except the events after his sixteenth birthday had given him a definition of _worst _that far exceeded every other circumstance barring his mother's death. They were definitely the most uncomfortable, by far. Maybe he would have been grateful that they weren't catastrophic, except he was trying so hard not to think about Bella that he couldn't think about anything else, an effort as frustrating as trying not to scratch a healing burn and just as pointless.

It was pointless because Bella was every-damn-where, out rounding up kids who were too busy doing group activities to want to show up for their appointments, or herding the younger ones to meals, or watching the soccer field from the sidelines as some of the tween girls vied for her attention. Sometimes the teenaged boys would invite her to play with them, but before Jacob could tell them to shut it she would always give them a _look _and say, "Don't you have someone your own age to beat?" She was really good at her job, judging by the whispered conversations he overheard between some of the campers—most of them, of course, would rather have walked through fire than admit they said a word in their sessions, let alone benefited from them.

_How can she be so good at understanding kids she doesn't even know, when she had her head so far up her ass when _we _were their age? _he couldn't stop himself from wondering, but he was trying not to think about that so instead he went to the equipment shed and reorganized all the athletic gear.

More than anything, he wanted to transform into the wolf and run for miles, but there were too many hikers out and campgrounds open this time of year—the last thing any wild animal needed was for him to start a hunt based on frightened glimpses in the twilight. So instead he ran as a human. It wasn't as effective, and the wolf seethed at him more vehemently than it had since he took over as Alpha.

And Bella was _always there._

He didn't realize how badly it was affecting him until a week into camp. His dad groused at him for leaving the screen door open and he snarled, his skin rippling as the fur that wanted to be there bristled.

Billy stared at him in silence for a moment, dark eyes giving nothing away, and then said, "You need to get out of here?"

"_No_," Jacob said. The wolf seconded that sentiment with a growl that bled through into the human denial.

"There's no shame in leaving her to her own devices. You think some of the older guys can't cover for you as a team? Wrong. You're not that vital, they just like to work you to death because you're willing to do it."

Jacob only shook his head and stalked out. At this time of evening, most of the kids were already in the dorms even though lights-out wasn't for a little longer, so he headed for the walking trail near the lake, still griping to himself.

There _was _shame in leaving, because it meant admitting defeat. It meant that Bella Swan had still beaten him, or his feelings for her had, because that was the real trick, wasn't it? She had told him what her choice was, and he had turned up again and again anyway, because he just couldn't fucking stay away.

The only time he had ever taken care of himself had been the time he told her he wouldn't watch her kill herself, and then he'd gone home and had the worst night of his life and nothing had been okay for _months_.

_Ephraim Black's son was not meant to follow Levi Uley's._

The look on Sam's face when he fell back into his human body, bleeding everywhere and totally shocked, had haunted Jacob's dreams to the point that Leah had threatened to bite his leg off the next time it appeared in her head. Normally he could keep everything to himself, but when he was sleeping, sometimes his control slipped. Another reason to refuse to leave. Leah would push and push and push, the way she always did, until she had the full story, and then her rage would leak to the others and he would have to relive it, every day, through everyone. Well, through everyone except for Paul, who couldn't have cared less about the entire thing. Better to put it off as long as possible, a task made easier by Seth's reassuring text about the kid's agreement to all their terms.

No sooner had he arrived at this conclusion than he practically mowed down Charlie and Bella, walking along the lake trail in the opposite direction. They split away from each other at the last second, but Bella tripped over a tree root and fell to her hands and knees.

"Shit!" She tried to push up and stopped, wincing.

"Shit," Jacob echoed, kneeling next to her. Charlie was quick to do the same. Jacob hovered his hand over her back, uncertain of what to do. "I'm sorry. Where are you hurt?"

She sighed, the sound heavy with some emotion he couldn't identify, and then said, "It's my, um, my pelvis. I've got some arthritis where the break was and it's been acting up since we got here. This might've made it a little worse. Here, help me up; I feel like an idiot."

Obediently, he reached down, and she grasped his forearm just below the elbow. A shock rippled from where her skin contacted his all the way up to his shoulder. A barely noticeable pause told him she felt it too. Gee, it was like being a teenager all over again, right down to the awkwardness and unwanted physical reactions. Neither of them said anything, though, as he slowly rose with her leaning on him.

"Arthritis, huh, Bells?" Charlie said once she was standing and stable. "Guess she beat you after all, Jake."

Jacob gave him a mystified look, and then glanced at Bella to see her wearing an identical expression. "Beat him, Dad?" she asked.

Charlie shrugged. "You always did say you were the one who was older. Seeing as I don't have any arthritis myself, I guess you beat Jake _and _me."

Bella's mouth dropped open in outrage. "That is so unfair! Your whole head is practically steel gray."

"Sorry. My mistake." Charlie stuck his hands in his pockets and gave Bella a sideways glance. "I thought you _wanted _to be older."

"Only when she was with me," Jake interjected. "All the rest of the time she hated the idea."

"I don't mind it so much in general now," Bella hastened to say. "Mostly. Except for when my dad says I'm older than him just because I have a teeny little bit of arthritis."

"Having arthritis adds at least two years. That makes you twenty-nine."

Jacob heard the words come out of his mouth and instantly wanted to call them back, but it was too late. Bella glared up at him and demanded, "Is that a joke?"

Now would be a good time to stop talking. "Yeah. So?"

Indignation flared in her eyes. "So I'm still as clumsy as when I was a teenager and that means I can deduct three years. So ha. Twenty-six. That's only a year and a half older than you."

_Shut up_, he ordered himself. "I still ride a motorcycle. That's incredibly irresponsible. Just ask your dad." Charlie nodded apologetically. "So I get to deduct a year for that at least. Twenty-four. Now you're two-and-a-half years older."

Her face flushed. "Well, I just got my first real job and it's at a summer camp! That's like a grad student and they're supposed to be around twenty-two. So deduct a year for that."

"You're still eighteen months older."

"Nuh-uh. You run your own business. That's very _mature._ Add a year."

"I only have a percentage. Six months, max."

"So I'm only a year older."

"You've got gray in your hair."

Gasping with pique, Bella exclaimed, "Only till I buy more hair dye!"

"It's still going to be there. That adds a year."

"Well, _you _take care of your dad all by yourself, so that adds a year at _least_. Maybe two."

"If I had to take care of Billy, I'd be claiming a whole decade," Charlie said. "You okay there, Bells?"

Jacob glanced down to see that Bella was still holding onto his arm as she leaned toward him. She seemed to realize it at the same moment. Snatching her hand back, she said, "Sure, Dad. I'm not as decrepit as you think."

"I didn't say that. Let me walk you back to your dorm. See you in a minute, Jake."

"Goodnight, Jacob. Um, thanks."

_For which, knocking you over or calling you old? _he wanted to ask, but his disobedient tongue finally listened to his wiser impulses and merely replied, "Goodnight."

He spent the rest of his walk alternating between smiling at the memory of her arguing with him and frowning at himself for being such a dumbass.


	8. Bujh Ti Nahin Hai, Kya Pyaas Hai

**Uncomfortably long hugs to cretin for prereading and FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for their beta'ing. Song for this chapter: "I Want You," by Kings of Leon.**

**# # #**

Saisha's next visitor arrived the following morning, and she didn't bother waiting for an invitation. Leah Clearwater walked in through the back door as if she owned the place while Saisha was contemplating her plate of scrambled eggs without much enthusiasm. Eating wasn't as fun when done alone.

"Hi, there," Leah greeted her, letting the door shut.

It wasn't as if she hadn't been expecting her, but this early in the day Saisha wasn't at her best. "May I help you?"

"Glad you asked. Now leave."

It was a good thing Saisha had consciously avoided forming any opinions about Leah based on how Seth acted. Shaking her head, she took a bite of eggs and swallowed, then said, "No. I'm my grandfather's guest."

Kitty, who had been largely absent since Saisha awoke, chose that moment to pounce from under the table onto Leah's bare feet. Leah jumped back. "Holy shit, what's—oh. Is this your cat?" Frowning, she edged the tiny animal back with her toes. "Ugh. Leave me alone, rat-tail." Kitty puffed up and hissed.

"That's Grandpa Charlie's cat. I'm here to take care of her." Saisha ate a few more bites while Leah and the cat faced off.

They seemed to decide in the same moment to completely ignore each other. Kitty stretched one back leg over her head and began licking her rear end; Leah glared at Saisha and sat at the table. "What the hell do you think you're doing here, leech? I thought we'd seen the last of the bloodsucking freak show."

Thinking of her Cullen family, Saisha could see how any human would arrive at that definition for them, but it still stung. "I'm not a vampire. I don't hunt, either humans or animals." It seemed that was all she told people nowadays.

"Whatever. Edward Cullen is your dad, right? Then you're a leech."

"_Was _my dad." It made no sense that the admission still hurt so badly.

Leah paused. "Cullen is dead?"

"Yes." Saisha expected her to say something along the lines of Edward having been dead already anyway. When the remark didn't come, she continued, "For many years."

"That must have knocked Vampbella for a loop," Leah muttered.

Shrugging, Saisha ate another bite. "I assume you're speaking of my mother? Actually, I don't know if it did or not. She hated my father, though, so maybe it was a relief."

Leah sputtered, "Wh-what? Bella Cullen? Hated your father? Uh, no. I'd say she had her head so far—never mind. What do you mean?"

"Bella _Swan_." The clarification was important. Everything about her mother's choices since the day Saisha was born could be symbolized by her mother's return to her given name, or so she had told her daughter. Saisha still had a hard time grasping some symbolism, but this one was obvious enough. "She divorced my father."

After a moment, Leah asked the question Seth hadn't. "Is your mom a vampire now?"

"No."

"Well. Sure as hell didn't see that one coming." Relaxing, Leah stretched her long legs out and leaned back in her chair, surveying Saisha from head to toe. "You don't hunt, huh?"

"No. My mother raised me to eat the same food she does." The eggs gone, Saisha pushed her plate to the side and rested her chin on her palms. "I've promised your brother to stay away from La Push. I'll make the same promise to you."

Leah's face darkened at the mention of Seth. "I can't believe he came here without any of the rest of us."

"He told me he was worried about you. Clearly unnecessary."

Snorting, Leah agreed, "You're right about that. He showed me what you said."

Saisha raised her eyebrows in query. "Showed you?"

Leah tapped her temple. "Telepathy. Which I guess is something you know about."

"A little. Though mine is dependent on touch and only goes in one direction, so it's not much use to me, plus my mom always made me use my words so I'm not as good at it as I might have been otherwise." Abruptly, Saisha realized she might have been rude. "Are you hungry? Seth said you eat more than I do, and I eat a lot."

Another long pause, and then Leah said, "I could eat."

Did that mean she _wanted _to eat? Or that it was a possibility? Saisha wanted to ask but was afraid of betraying her ignorance. Trying to come up with an indirect method of discovering the truth, she ventured, "I have several dozen eggs."

"Scrambled eggs are good."

That wasn't an answer either! Why, why, _why _were people so confusing? Maybe if she started, and Leah didn't stop her or walk out, that would mean Leah did want to eat. Getting up, she pulled the carton from the fridge and began cracking shells on the edge of a mixing bowl. No objection came from the other girl, so Saisha relaxed and started the other familiar steps. "Your brother's really nice."

"He's an idiot."

Saisha brought to mind what she'd observed and read about brothers and sisters. "Isn't that what older sisters are supposed to think about their brothers?"

"True. He's not bad, either. Just a dumbass sometimes."

Saisha didn't know what to say to that, so she attempted some redirection. "It was fun to talk to him. I don't get to converse with a lot of people."

"Seth'll talk your ear off if you give him half a chance. He got that from our dad. "

"That must be loud when you all are together."

"My dad's dead."

"Oh." Leah hadn't offered condolences about Edward, which meant maybe it was impolite to do so, but Saisha said anyway, "I'm sorry." So that meant Seth understood more than just what it was like to be an anomaly. He understood being fatherless, too.

Leah sighed, and for a moment she looked very young. "It wasn't your fault. If you don't stir those, they'll stick."

"I know. The pan's not hot enough yet." Saisha picked up a spatula and stirred, though.

"You're not what I expected."

Setting the spatula down on a plate, Saisha turned to look at Leah in curiosity. "Seth said that, too. What did you expect?"

"A vampire."

"I might act like one more often if my mom hadn't raised me away from them, but she really doesn't like most vampires, so she tried to discourage that sort of behavior as much as possible."

Leah's jaw dropped in obvious consternation. "Bella Cullen? Doesn't like vampires? Are we even talking about the same person?"

"Bella _Swan_." The reasons behind Bella's dislike of vampires were probably too personal to share, although Saisha supposed she could ask for permission.

Eyebrows scrunched in deep thought, Leah nodded. "Bella Swan. Huh. Who knew?"

( * * * )

"Jacob! Jacob! Come help us!"

Jacob paused on his way past the campfire and turned. "What's up, guys?" Technically he was supposed to attend campfire each night—every person present at the camp was supposed to—but tonight he'd begged off with the excuse that he wanted to set up for the next day's activities.

The kids, and adults, were split into two groups, one on either side of the campfire. Bella stood in the middle of them both, turning red in the flickering light. One group of kids were beckoning him to their side; the others shouted "No fair!" and "No, he can't help!" at them.

"You guys got Chief Charlie, and he counts for like three grown-ups," a girl who looked about nine years old shot back, and at that the second group quieted.

"We're playing Charades," one of the teenagers explained in answer to Jacob's questioning look. "Bella didn't want to be on a team but we made her."

"And now no one can guess what it is!" Bella said. She was trying to play it cool but she was still _Bella_, after all, and that meant she was dying as the center of attention. Jacob, of course, could see what the others couldn't: the pulse jumping in her throat, the tremor in her hands, the slight quiver of her lips. "I told them they would be sorry."

"It's my fault," Karen said in an apologetic tone. "I picked an older title and probably none of them have heard of it."

"You're good at this," said River, a girl who had been at the camp every year since Jacob started volunteering. "You should help us guess."

With a reluctant sigh, Jacob turned. "Okay. Show me, Bella."

She didn't look any more eager than he, but she nodded and held up two fingers. "Two words," he supplied. She held up one hand to her eye as if looking through a lens and cranked with the other like with a camera reel. "A movie title?"

"Why does that mean a movie?" one of the younger kids, Logan, whispered to another. "It looks like she's saying she's crazy."

With another nod, Bella stood straight and held up one finger.

"First word."

Bella drew a circle around her face.

"Expression!" River shouted.

"No, it's sign language. Beautiful!" her friend Josh, whose older sister was deaf, exclaimed.

"You guys are making it too complicated. Face," Jacob guessed.

Bella pointed at him enthusiastically, and then held up two fingers.

"Second word."

Clenching her hand into a fist, Bella swung from the shoulder.

"_Off_!" yelled Eli.

Even though her action had a cold lump of dread lodged in his chest, Jacob snorted with laughter. "Eli, what the heck makes you think that's what she's saying?"

Eli shrugged. "I dunno, that's just the only movie I know that starts with 'Face.'"

"That's not it, though. _Face Swing_?" River said.

"_Face Hook_," Josh added.

"You're both wrong, but this movie's pretty old so it's no surprise." No wonder Bella had been so nervous. Jacob swallowed and then forced the words out. "_Face Punch._"

Looking miserable, Bella touched one finger to the tip of her nose.

"Are you _serious_?" several of the kids said at once.

"That movie sucked," said one of the girls, who Jacob knew for a fact was only five years old.

"You _saw_ that movie?" Bella exclaimed in horror. "Holy… crow. I was eighteen when I saw it and it was almost too much for me."

"I saw it when I was four. It sucked," the little girl repeated with relish.

"Yeah, it did suck," Jacob agreed. He turned and walked away as fast as he could without running, but he couldn't help hearing Bella's whisper.

"I had fun watching it, though."

That night, between Billy's snoring and Charlie's sleep-muttering, Jacob couldn't rest. At home he ran two box fans so the white noise would drown out the sounds his ears couldn't help but pick up, but there had been no room in the car to bring them. Now he wished he had made his dad hold them on his lap. It would have been worth all the griping.

With a frustrated grunt, Jacob rolled out of bed and pulled on some shorts, but left it at that. This late, he wouldn't be running into any of the campers. Well, at least he shouldn't be, and if he did his shirtlessness would be the least of their problems.

Instead of going into the campgrounds, he headed toward the lake. The wolf was restless, too; it had been too long since he let it free. It was starting to get insistent, pointing out random flashes of light, or bleach smells in the laundry room, and suggesting they might mean vampires. For whatever reason, it didn't associate _Bella _with vampires—probably because she no longer carried the reek of them on her skin, and the wolf had no capacity for worry about past events—but it liked to point her out to him too. He pushed the thought away and focused on the night noises around him, then started looking for animals.

_Hunt? _the wolf asked hopefully. If it couldn't catch vampires it would settle for hunting other creatures, though it usually didn't want to kill them unless Jacob hadn't eaten in a long time.

_Quit it_, he ordered.

The wolf grumbled at him. _Want to run._

_Sorry. _But to placate it, he started jogging. He had traveled the circumference of the lake twice when the sound of splashing greeted his ears.

Great. There were times he loved being a werewolf and all the cool abilities that came with it, and then there were times like these, which were far more frequent, when he wished that he couldn't hear, couldn't see, couldn't smell and taste what went right over the heads of normal humans. It would be pretty awesome to be able to live in ignorance for once.

His senses were what they were, though, and his responsibilities were the same regardless of whether or not any of the other counselors would have heard the sounds. He headed over to break up whatever couple was probably skinny-dipping in the flickering patches of moonlight that appeared through the fleeting cloud cover. The tiny waves lapping at the shore rushed across his feet but didn't give away his approach, silent as only a werewolf's could be. The wind changed as the girl climbed out of the lake and stood on the pier.

_Her,_ the wolf told him, just before the scent hit his nose and he realized it wasn't a girl, but Bella.

Jacob watched despite himself while she walked to the end of the pier and executed a shallow dive with perfect form. He had never seen Bella do anything physical with any sort of grace before. The sight of her, entering the water with hardly a splash to show her passage, made him tilt his head in puzzlement. It was as if she weren't even Bella anymore, as if something had come and snatched her body, taking it from her to make it capable and strong.

_Swim? _the wolf suggested.

_Oh hell no, _he replied, but without much vigor. He was too busy waiting for her to come back to the surface.

_Come on, Bella._

_Come on._

It was almost a full minute before he realized, with sickening certainty, that she wasn't going to do it. Cursing under his breath, he dashed to the pier and raced to the end, diving off where he had marked her passage. Once under the water, he opened his eyes. Someone dependent on light to see would have been screwed in this situation, but he was able to make out quite a bit, enough to tell that Bella wasn't floating on the lake bed. He stayed under for so long that even he, born and raised by the sea, felt his lungs strain and his ears start to ring.

Gasping, he came up for air and almost went under again before a whisper cut through the sound of his breathing. "Jake?"

Whipping around, he saw Bella, back pressed to one of the logs that supported the pier, staring at him.

"Bella!" He swam so quickly to her that he didn't remember the journey. One moment he was twenty feet away and the next he was in front of her. Her big eyes and blue lips made her look vulnerable and young. He flashed back to another day, another place, striking her back over and over again as she lay limp over his arm and he tried not to throw up from sheer terror that she was dead, she'd finally succeeded in what he'd always feared was her goal, and then he had one hand gripping her shoulder and he shook her. "You stupid—what the _fuck _were you thinking? Are you trying to kill yourself? Because you came pretty goddamn close from what I can tell!"

Bella tried to wrench her shoulder away, but she was out of her depth and had nothing against which to brace herself. "What are you talking about? You're hurting me. Let me go."

He did, but moved closer, too furious to stop himself or even care that she was dangerously near. Her scent was still the same, exactly as he remembered now that the lake had washed her new shampoo from her hair. That only served to infuriate him further. "I'm talking about you! Swimming alone at night and I'm guessing not even telling anybody you were out here, and then diving in shallow water and getting in trouble." Saying it made him wonder, "How did you get over here?"

Bella was looking at him as if he were crazy. "Jake, I wasn't in trouble. I ended up over here because I swam underwater. You scared the crap out of me when you dove in like that. I was fine. I'm a good swimmer."

He jerked his head back in disbelief. "That's not how I remember it."

She laughed, actually _laughed_, and he nearly phased with his own anger at the sound, but she didn't seem aware of the danger in which she stood. "Jacob Black, are you still the same person _you _were eight years ago? Or is it nine, now?"

"Nine," he whispered. Nine years since he'd yanked her from the surf and watched her leave him to die anyway. Eight since he'd finally found the balls to walk away from the suicide play. "Yeah, Bella. I kind of am the same person. Still Jacob." _Still the guy who wasn't good enough, even after you left the guy who supposedly was._

She looked into his eyes. The moon had come out from behind the clouds and she probably had a decent view despite the shadow from the pier. The strangely potent fury died down before her inspection. Suddenly, he felt naked, as if his open expression of his feelings had revealed something he would rather have kept hidden, but he didn't know what that was.

"In that case," she said at last, "you're luckier than most. But then, you always did have a strong understanding of who you were and what you wanted. You were just stuck in a life that sort of conspired against you having it, weren't you?"

No. She didn't get to avoid responsibility for his disappointments—he wouldn't say _heartbreak_—that way. "It wasn't just _life _that kept me from getting what I wanted, Bella. It was you."

She nodded. "I know. A bunch of vampires, and me. Probably you could have handled the vampires more easily."

One of his hands was braced on the beam behind her head. Reaching up, she curled her fingers around his wrist. Her touch sent nervousness skittering through his veins, as if by some strange alchemy she had managed to transform his blood into the emotions she inspired. Now they weren't just limited to his heart, they had taken over his entire body, a network of fear and anger and other things he would rather not identify making his bones ache and his muscles tense. He had long ago accepted that his form wasn't fully his own to control, but he had attained a little bit of authority over it over the years. This new witchcraft made a mockery of all his hard work to the contrary.

"I've practiced this apology, most of it, for years, so I'm sorry if it sounds rehearsed, but honestly I never thought I'd get the chance to give it to you in person." She swallowed. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for the pain I caused you. Sorry for jerking you around. Sorry for saying I didn't love you and for making you watch me choose death, so many times. I'm sorry for that horrible kiss on that mountain when I said I would do anything to save you and then wouldn't even kiss you back, and I'm sorry for the kisses right after that because I should have let your hope die and I didn't."

She paused, as if waiting for him to interject, but when he remained silent went on. "I'm sorry that I didn't send you away at my wedding so you could heal. I'm sorry that I let you think I turned into a vampire when you would rather have known otherwise. I thought I was doing the right thing and helping you move on, but it was arrogant of me to keep you from the truth. Most of all, I'm so sorry that I made you cry. You were made for only good things, Jacob, and I brought you nothing but bad, and I wish with my whole heart that I could undo everything I did that hurt you." Her voice started wavering toward the end, but she kept going, and whatever tears shimmered in her eyes didn't fall.

For some reason, the apology, thorough as it was, offended him all over again. She was saying she had possessed the power to hurt him, and he hated admitting the truth of that. She should never have been able to hold so much influence over his mind and his emotions. Hell, she shouldn't be able to now. Yet here he was, in the middle of the night, with her practically in his arms, and all he could think was, "You left something out."

"What's that?" she asked in a whisper. She still held his wrist; her free arm moved in lazy circles, keeping her afloat.

"You let me think you were still married."

Giving him a puzzled look, she said, "What would you have wanted from me? To write to you and say, 'by the way, I'm available now'? Wouldn't that have been kind of a jerk thing to do? I guess it would have given you the opportunity to be the one doing the denying, but I thought you would rather just not have to deal with me at all. God knows that's justified. But I was raising Saisha by myself and trying not to get caught by the Volturi, until finally the Cullens took care of that, and it would have been no life for you even if you would have found it in you to forgive me and take me back. Plus, you were in high school the last time I saw you. I mean, who still obsesses over their suicidal sophomore-year crush when they've graduated? I assumed you would have moved on like anybody else."

The truth of her words stung him into action; before he realized what he was doing, he had his body against hers, pushing her back into the beam. She gasped and jerked her head up to stare at him, wide-eyed.

The wolf chose that moment to remind him of its presence, rumbling with satisfaction at the sight of the white skin of her neck exposed to his view. Jacob struggled with himself, struggled with the wolf, and only managed to become more aware of her figure fitting snug against his own. Closing his eyes, he let his forehead rest on the wood beside her head, gritting his teeth.

The harsh sound of her breathing, alternating with his, was the only sound he heard besides their heartbeats for a moment.

Finally he spoke. "You should have told me."

She nodded against his shoulder. Her arm rose out of the water to hook around his neck.

"I should have had a choice."

She nodded again.

The hand not holding onto the pier behind her moved of its own accord down her side, coming to rest on the curve of her waist under the top part of her bathing suit. She shivered, but he could tell it wasn't from cold.

"I should have _mattered_."

His palm smoothed across her belly, encountering strange vertical marks and one curving horizontal scar. Bella's fingers tightened. She turned her head so that her lips brushed his ear, and said, soft-voiced, "You never stopped mattering. I'm the one who made you feel like you didn't, but it was a lie."

There was so much pressure in his throat that he hoped he wouldn't start crying and finish the job of humiliating himself. When he was almost certain that wouldn't happen, he shoved back and swam away, stopping once he had put a few dozen feet of distance between them. She hadn't moved.

His voice sounded too clear across the water. "Just once, I'd love to have the whole truth from you."

Her eyes kept her secrets, and told him nothing, though they glittered in a way that made him want to take guesses. "It's hard to give when I don't know it myself. But I know a little more, now. I'll tell you all of it, if you want."

Jacob turned around and swam away, and went to his bed without once looking back.


	9. Kya Nasha Iss Pyaar Ka

**Cretin pre-reads, FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma beta, and I love them all inappropriately. I wrote a whole section after they'd already looked at it, so any mistakes are even more mine than usual. (And thanks to slcottin for catching one of them.) Song for this chapter: "Shelter," by The xx.**

**# # #**

Jacob expected Bella to completely avoid him after their encounter. That had been her M.O., back when they were younger—he would push and she would run, until the last time when she stood firm and he had done the running. So he had a hard time dealing with the shock when she showed up at his cabin just as Billy, Charlie, and he were about to leave for breakfast.

The wolf greeted Bella's appearance with a happy acknowledgment. _Her!_

"Hey Dad," she greeted Charlie.

"Bells. How're you?" he responded.

Jacob and Billy exchanged a mystified glance, and Jacob knew his father shared his sentiments on the matter: Charlie and Bella were _so weird. _It was as if being within a dozen feet of each other was all either of them required from their relationship.

"Fine, thanks. Hey, Jacob, can I talk to you?"

_No, _he almost said, but Billy and Charlie were the ones glancing at each other now and those two were nosy old gossips. "Sure."

"We'll just head on in, then," Charlie said, taking Billy's wheelchair handlebars from Jacob's lax grip.

Once they were out of earshot, Bella turned to Jacob. "Let's talk about last night."

Instantly he went on the defensive. "Let's not. I don't want to."

He made to walk past her, but she caught his elbow. "I think you do, though, or you would have just swum away after you saw I was all right."

Wrenching his arm free, he demanded, "What the hell do you know, Bella? I thought you were drowning, okay? Excuse me if previous experience taught me to expect you to have a fucking death wish."

Bella didn't seem upset by his words, or the harsh tone in which he spoke. She ran after him as he stalked down the path. "I don't blame you for thinking that way at all. The last time I saw you, I told you I had decided to die for my baby. That was bound to color every memory you had of me."

Jacob spun to face her again. "It was more like _everything you did _made me think that way. The motorcycles and the cliff-diving and the running off to Italy and the offering to give yourself up to Victoria and the vampire fucking! Don't forget that! The demon spawn was just icing." He started walking again.

Fury moved across her face as she jogged beside him and then vanished, lost behind the understanding. "Saisha isn't demon spawn. It wasn't her fault I had decided to keep her. But the rest of it… yeah. I was beyond messed up."

He couldn't think of how to agree without repeating everything he'd just said, so instead he asked, "Why do you want to talk about it? What do you want from me?"

"I don't want anything from you."

The words stopped him in his tracks. It was reminiscent of their relationship before, but at the same time it was the opposite of what he'd expected. He'd given her everything he had to give, and she'd still demanded more, all the while proclaiming she wanted nothing, but this… This sounded genuine. It couldn't be, though; nobody wanted _nothing _from Jacob Black. "Why are you here, then?"

Bella moved to stand in front of him. "I want to be able to give you whatever closure you need. We've been dancing around each other the whole time we've been here, but clearly that isn't enough or you wouldn't have been so angry last night and this morning. If talking to me about what happened can help with that, then let's do it. Let's not pretend like it doesn't matter or it didn't hurt or that I didn't fuck you over."

The sight of her bow-shaped mouth forming the word _fuck _was so incongruous that he stared at it, and didn't realize what he was doing until she said, "Jake?"

Tearing his gaze away, he looked to see that her entire face was red. "Um, yeah." He gave his head a quick shake and said, "I don't want therapy."

Bella raised one eyebrow. "Did I say anything about therapy? C'mon, Jacob. This is your chance. Talk to the bitch who made your life hell and finally move on, one hundred percent."

Even though she was only echoing words that he'd said to himself a thousand times, he automatically contradicted, "You're not a bitch."

She laughed, and the sound brought back all the memories that hurt the worst, the ones from before the Mercedes appeared in front of Charlie's house and everything went to shit. "Maybe not now, but I sure was then. Of course, lots of eighteen-year-olds aren't models of charity, but I think I was pretty bad even compared to average."

His chest felt like a vise had closed around it, but she couldn't know that. It was too much, to hear her admit it in so matter-of-fact a fashion. He wanted her to be the same girl he remembered, so he could rail at her guilt-free and know he was fully justified. Grown-up Bella, Professional Bella, Mature Bella didn't deserve all his hatred and bitterness and pain, but the thing was she still mostly looked like Teenaged Bella and she definitely smelled like Garage Bella, from before she started carrying the constant pollution of vampire on her person. He didn't know what to do with the gallery of women she presented for his inspection.

One thing he had always been with her was honest. "I have no clue what to say to you."

She spread her hands in a welcoming gesture. "Anything. Everything. Ask all the questions I know you must have. Tell me all the things you wished you had said. I can't be the only one who wondered what would have happened if I'd said this or done that or stopped myself from doing this."

This bravado was so new that he almost turned her down—she seemed like a stranger in that instant—but then he took a closer look. Despite her challenge, she was frightened. He could smell it seeping from her pores in the cold sweat on her palms, in the thready rush of her pulse, and in her shallow breathing. Inviting his interrogation and his censure was really hard for her.

Bella bit her lip, and offered, "I'll cancel my appointments just for today and help you with the kids, if you want. We can talk while we do that. It'll be good for me to see how they interact with their peers anyway."

Surely he could be enough of an adult to handle one day with her.

The wolf liked that thought. It hated how afraid he was of spending time around Bella. It didn't understand fear from past wounds and it seemed obvious to the wolf that this woman presented no threat.

Heaving a deep sigh, he agreed. "Fine."

Bella was smart enough not to do anything besides nod. "Okay. Thank you."

"Now can I go eat?" he asked.

She stepped back and motioned him in front of her.

_Good, _the wolf told him with unbearable smugness. It knew he should always be in the lead.

_Shut the fuck up. _He didn't know why he bothered saying it. It never listened.

They ate with silence resting heavy between them, Jacob talking to Billy and Bella talking to Charlie, but they were both on KP duty after the meal. Jacob loaded the trays in the dishwasher after Bella sprayed them off. The kids couldn't be trusted with the sprayer, and really, neither could Jacob.

"Where's Edward?" Jacob asked. Hell, if he was going to have free rein to ask whatever he wanted, he might as well go for the big questions first.

Bella's lips thinned, but her voice remained steady. "He's dead."

Jacob nearly dropped the trays before recovering. "He's… he's what?"

She spoke in an undertone only he could hear. "He's dead. The Volturi wouldn't back off of us once they found out that I wasn't a vampire, and they were threatening Saisha's life too. I refused to live with the Cullens so I didn't even have that much protection. The Cullens went to Volterra with their allies and fought them. With Jasper on their side, they couldn't lose. But, in the battle, the Volturi guard killed Edward."

Trying to think of what the right thing was to say, Jacob finally offered, "I'm sorry." It was true. At one point in time he would have liked nothing more than to hear that Edward Cullen had stopped existing in any sense of the word. Now he knew that losing someone created a vacuum in the world where that person had been, no matter how bad he was for the people who loved him.

To his shock, Bella laughed, a single snort of derision. "Don't be. I wasn't."

Jacob shoved the rack into the dishwasher and flipped the lever to start it. "You guys were already divorced by then."

"Yeah, not that our vows meant a whole lot legally speaking." Bella picked up the next tray and sprayed it. "River, quit hitting Josh with that mop and use it on the floor," she called without looking behind her. Jacob turned his head to see River sheepishly setting the mop down. "I couldn't stay with him after what he did to me."

"What _did _he do?" Jacob took the trays and started lining them up in the next rack.

"He and Alice got Jasper to make me and Rosalie feel complacent, long enough for Carlisle to sedate me, and then he took the baby out while I was under. They lifted out my uterus, because it had turned into some weird stone thing to protect her so they couldn't have opened it without their teeth, which would have meant me turning."

Jacob's mouth had dropped open in horror, but he couldn't close it. He couldn't do anything except stare at her.

The only sign Bella gave of what she was feeling was her jaw, tightened so far that she could barely speak. "They realized they had left it too long when they severed my uterus from my body and Saisha kept kicking. When they opened it up she was alive. Premature, but alive. I came around then—I think my metabolism had changed while I was pregnant and Carlisle hadn't accounted for it—and I was so angry. Absolutely livid. Even Jasper couldn't do anything about it. They had taken my free will away from me because they thought they were doing the right thing. They had tried to kill my baby. Edward always thought he was doing the right thing and it always ended up with me being hurt and I was _done _the minute I woke up and saw what had happened."

She shrugged. "I made a deal with Edward: her first year could be with him if Jasper and Alice left. I had to stay with the Cullens for a while so I could recover and so they could help me watch Saisha, but eventually I had to live on my own so they wouldn't keep spoiling her. They didn't understand why I made her talk, why I wouldn't let them give her human blood—" Jacob made a noise of distress, and she nodded in response. "I know. I craved human blood when I was pregnant with her and I was afraid of what that meant for her. She still would eat all her meat raw if I let her." Giving a proud smile, she handed him the last tray. "But she doesn't hunt. She eats human food."

"When did they try to abort her?" he asked hoarsely.

"The night you left."

That night. He'd been busy adjusting to his new role as Alpha and making sure his order to steer clear of Cullen land was sticking with the rest of the pack.

"You looked so bad when I took off… How long did it take you to get better?"

"About fourteen months. I had to have a couple of surgeries for my pelvis, plus there was the whole emergency hysterectomy thing, and then physical therapy… It took way longer than I wanted it to. I was so scared they'd make Saisha like them that I pushed myself too hard."

The dishwasher beeped, signaling the end of its cycle. With a start, Jacob turned back to flip the lever up and take out the rack. "Hey, you two!" He pointed at a couple of middle schoolers who were mainly leaning on the counters, talking behind their hands. "Come put these away."

They rolled their eyes, which seemed to be a required response to anything and everything, but made their way to the trays.

Bella walked with him to the recreational area and helped him set up badminton nets next. While she turned the crank, he asked, "So when'd you go back to school?"

"A few years ago. I hate being dependent on Cullen money. I'll take it for Saisha but I want to support myself. I went for my MFT because Saisha still has trouble understanding human emotions and I wanted to be able to explain them to her more clearly, plus it pays well." She looked around at the camp with a wry expression. "Well, sometimes it does. This is good experience, though."

"Whoa, that's high enough."

She had some trouble pushing the crank into the locked position, so he reached to help her. The shock at the brush of their fingertips was starting to feel familiar. He ignored it, but Bella stepped back and rubbed her palms on her thighs. The motion lifted the hem of her shorts higher, exposing more milky-white skin to his perusal. She still had pretty legs, long compared to the rest of her body despite her lack of inches.

He looked up to see her smiling. Extending her foot, she turned it back and forth, displaying her leg for his inspection. "They're nice, right?"

It was so much the opposite of what he'd expected, since she'd always greeted any sign of sexual interest with avoidance before, that he laughed outright. "Very."

Bella blushed, but kept her smile. "For a while all I could do was swim for exercise because it's so low-impact, so I got good at it. This was a nice side-effect. I think they look better than they did in high school."

He spoke without thinking first. "I don't know; I liked them okay back then too."

Bella blinked rapidly in obvious shock. Jake had a hard time believing he'd said anything flirtatious too.

The arrival of the first group of campers saved them from having to rescue the moment. With a sigh of relief, Jacob bent to pick up a bunch of racquets before calling them over.

Bella was just as bad at land-based sports as she'd ever been, but at least playing with grade-schoolers meant that any missed swings went over their heads. She had a good attitude, anyway, laughing at her mistakes and encouraging the kids who didn't want to play that they could get it.

"Even though I know you couldn't tell by watching me," she added when a little girl named Madison gave her a dubious look.

"I used to be really clumsy," Jacob added.

"But you grew out of it?" Madison asked.

"He grew and grew and _grew_," Bella said with a laugh. "He was like the vine in Jack and the Beanstalk."

Madison giggled. "'Cept he's the giant too."

"I'm not a giant," Jacob said, all exaggerated dignity. "Everybody else is just short."

The lunch bell rang then, and the kids ran to drop their racquets next to the adults before heading to the mess hall. Jacob had learned the hard way that leaving easily-moved equipment out even for an hour was a bad idea, so he started putting them back in their bags. Bella helped in silence.

When they sat at the table, Karen immediately claimed Bella's attention for the entire meal in a discussion about Surinder and how he still wasn't talking. Jacob spoke to the other counselors, or the guys anyway. Most of the younger women tended to get flustered when he tried to talk to them, so unless they started a conversation he left them alone. That wasn't his usual method of dealing with the issue, but right now he just wasn't up to teasing them into comfort. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Bella swallow pill after pill, but it seemed rude to ask why when others could hear them.

The afternoon sessions were reserved for the older kids, and they required a lot less instruction (though just as much oversight to keep them from clubbing each other in the head on purpose). Bella looked at Jacob expectantly once the matches began. "What else?"

He didn't want to say it, because it sounded plaintive no matter what tone he used, but he had to. "Why didn't you come back? Charlie knows your daughter's different, so what kept you away?"

Bella shook her head. "Saisha grew so fast we had to move every few months. We had to change our names too, so the Volturi couldn't find us as easily. One of their guard, Demetri, had this weird tracking ability where if he'd seen you, he could find you, no matter where you went, so sometimes it was even less than three months in one place. Until the Cullens took him out." With a sigh, she added, "Plus, I just didn't want to bring their attention to Charlie. Vampires tend to get locked into a certain idea of how they're going to do something, so as long as he wasn't right in front of them, they wouldn't think to use him, but if I was in Forks there was no way it wouldn't have occurred to them."

"We could have helped protect you." He would have made sure of it, even if he would have hated every minute of the job.

Bella reached up to pat his shoulder. He couldn't stop his flinch at her touch. It was still so strange to have her initiate that sort of thing, although in the past she'd rarely evaded it when he offered. "I know you would have, but I didn't feel like I had any right to ask you. You'd already given up so much for me."

More than she knew. He still wasn't willing to talk about the circumstances of him becoming Alpha. He remembered telling her, _sometimes things are set in motion, and then it's too late. _Everything, from the moment the Cullens triggered the werewolf gene, had always been leading to the moment when he pinned Sam to the ground by his throat. Some destinies shouldn't be denied. The mutant baby had just been the unlucky catalyst in this case.

They talked about normal things for the rest of the day, things that didn't make his chest ache and throat burn, until the end of the day came and they had to put the racquets, birdies, and nets back into the storage shed. The kids who helped with the job cleared out to go to supper, but Bella lingered, reorganizing a few things. When he moved next to the door, waiting for her, she said, "Thanks for letting me tag along. I really appreciate it."

"Nah." Jacob shrugged. "I'm glad. You were right. I had a ton of questions."

Bella crossed the shed and stood in front of him, craning her neck back to meet his gaze. "Did you get the answers you needed?"

He looked down on her in silence long enough to watch the color rise in her cheeks. "Most of them."

"What's left?"

What was left? Just the buzzing awareness between them that had always been present since she showed up in La Push, the knowing that had made him half-sick with longing even before his first phase. All the signs were still there: the magnetic pull and the rush of warmth every time they touched, even for a brief instant, the way she licked her lips unconsciously when she looked at him, right down to the _give _he sensed in her body when he approached her. Bella Swan was available, and she wanted him. He'd been too inexperienced then to know how to act, but here, today, he was no virgin.

_Want? Take, _the wolf said. To it, the two things were practically the same concept.

_I'm human, _he told it, but the fact of the matter was he didn't feel like himself at all. Or he did, but not who he had been for the past eight years; he felt like the Jake he once had been, the one who had planned for things without entertaining the possibility that his plans might fail. That kid had been reckless but he had been brave, too, and right now Jake was wondering if he could still be that brave. This was the other unfinished business between them. He had kissed her and she had kissed him back and both of them had loved it, even in the middle of all the hurting, because their bodies just _worked_ together.

"Jake," she whispered, taking a tiny step forward. "What's left?"

"I don't know," he told her, and he thought he was being honest, but the way his heart pounded put the lie to the words. He watched his hand as it reached for her arm, tracing its length down to her fingertips without his conscious approval.

Bella inhaled, a deep, shuddering breath. She didn't move otherwise. Her heartbeat sped up to nearly match his own.

"That's left," he said. It wasn't a remnant or a memory. "That's real."

She nodded. "It always was, no matter what I told you."

"But you're being honest now."

Somehow she had come to lean against him. Her chin rested on his chest. "I stopped lying to myself a long, long time ago. That made it easier."

"Yeah." His hands shook when they rose to cradle her face.

She tilted her head into one of his palms, but didn't look away. "Jake?"

"Uh-huh?"

"How honest do you want me to be?"

Before he could formulate an answer, he heard Charlie. "Bells? Jake?"

Bella groaned under her breath but stepped back. Jacob let his hands fall to his sides.

Charlie stepped into the door and looked at both of them. "Hey. You two coming to dinner? They're going to quit serving soon."

With a forced smile, Bella walked past him and out onto the path. "Sure, Dad. Coming right now."

"All right, then." Charlie ambled after her, giving no indication he'd seen anything, but Jacob wasn't fooled. Any man who remembered his daughter playing a silly age game with her high school friend noticed everything about her.

( * * * )

Saisha, watching Kitty rise to her hind legs and bat at motes in the sunshine, said, "I'm glad _you're _happy about this." From now on, checking the weather report would be first on her daily to-do list. She had planned to walk to the store, since Forks' usual overcast weather would allow her to do so, but now if she wanted meat for dinner she would have to put on makeup and take her mother's car. The keys had made it to her dress pocket, but she hadn't been able to persuade herself to do anything else.

Her phone buzzed. Expecting to see a text from her mother or grandfather, each of whom contacted her two or three times a day, she instead beheld a message from Seth, who had put his number into her contacts before he left.

_You bored?_

Well, this was new. Normally she only got texts from family. Smiling, she messaged back, _Really bored._

_I can tell._

Jerking her head up, Saisha looked out the back door windows and saw Seth standing there grinning at her. He was so _quiet_. She'd never before met anyone who could sneak up on her, with the exception of the Cullens. Even his heartbeat had escaped her notice, lost in observation of the cat as she'd been.

Dashing to open the door, she yanked it open. Seth's eyes got wide. "Whoa," he said. "You're so fast I could hardly see you move just now."

Distracted from inviting him inside, Saisha asked, "Is that bad? I didn't mean to scare you."

The grin returned. She really liked when she could make it come back. "Nah, Sonny. Don't worry. You can't scare a big bad werewolf like me."

"Oh, good, because I would feel guilty." Stepping aside, she gestured toward the kitchen table. "Would you like to come in? I can feed you again."

Seth didn't move. "No thanks. I thought we could go for a run, if you wanted. I promised to show you the boundary line of our territory. Have you been up toward La Push yet?"

Shaking her head, Saisha said, "I haven't, but, it's sunny."

"I noticed. Sunny for Sonny. You must've brought the California weather up with you."

"No, I mean I can't, because—" It would be easier just to show him what she meant. Saisha stepped out into the light from the sunset and turned to face him. The neighbors on both sides were gone, so no one else would see. "I can't go out in this weather. Even after the sun sets, the moon is waxing gibbous."

"Wow," he breathed, jaw dropping open.

"Yeah." Extending one arm, she examined the glowing skin critically. "It's very annoying. I can put makeup on the exposed patches but..."

"You shouldn't hide it. You're _gorgeous._"

At the open admiration in his words, Saisha jerked her gaze from her skin to Seth's face. He looked completely dazzled. Again. And his physiological signs were completely aroused. Again. When would she learn? No wonder her mother wouldn't let her associate with humans. They were so vulnerable. Jumping past him back to the door, she said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to."

The awe and appreciation faded to be replaced with... confusion? Or concern maybe? "Didn't mean to what?"

Now would be an excellent time to confess, so he could be on his guard against her effect. But what if the revelation frightened him and he didn't want to text her again or ask her to come for runs anymore? If she were very, very careful and remembered not to do anything that could possibly be unfair to him, surely it would be all right to keep silent. She couldn't stand it if he didn't come back. With a shrug, Saisha said, "Nothing. Sorry. I guess maybe if we stayed in deep forest and avoided hikers we could go."

Kitty, finally noticing that her path to freedom lay unhindered, sprinted through the doorway. Seth caught her up in one big hand. "Sure, that sounds great. And then we can head south, if you want. Have you seen the Sol Duc River? It's really pretty. Hey, I can show you the house where you were born! You haven't seen that since you were a baby, have you?"

That sort of visit hadn't even occurred to Saisha, but now that he'd mentioned it she felt a burning desire to go. "No, but I'd love to. Does my family still own it?"

"I think so, yeah. I've never seen it for sale, anyway, but I don't head that way very often." Seth deposited the kitten back into the kitchen and pulled the door shut. "If it's empty, you can look at your dad's old bedroom. I bet that'd be interesting, right?"

Never in her life had anyone encouraged Saisha to revisit a place she'd left behind, or reconnect with memories of her father through such means. Seth, however, knew what she needed when she hadn't realized it herself. Sudden, unbearable excitement surged in her chest. "That would be so cool!" Pulling her keys from her pocket, she locked the back door and turned to him. "Let's go."

Nodding, Seth said, "Okay, hold on a second. Let me just phase."

"Can I watch? It must be a fascinating process."

Seth looked like he was suppressing laughter, but what could be funny about scientific inquiry into shapeshifting? "Uh, no, Sonny. Sorry, but I have to get naked first unless I want to shred my shorts to bits, and these are almost new. I'm gonna go behind the trees to phase."

"Oh." Well, darn. "Okay, I'll just wait here."

"Thanks." Jogging back to the forest, he disappeared into the shadows. Saisha listened hard, but heard no sign of the transformation. One second his heart beat slightly faster than average human speed, the next its rate jumped to over ninety beats a minute and the faintly doggy scent that always followed him became exponentially stronger. A pair of eyes glinted green at her from behind the tree line.

_Lucky, _Saisha thought, racked with envy. Her own body could do things humans couldn't, but it wasn't nearly as interesting as Seth's. Overcome with an abrupt desire to show off a little, she jumped from the back steps to his side in one easy bound. His ears pricked up when she landed soundlessly in front of his nose.

Now it was Saisha's turn to breathe, "Wow," as she examined his wolf form from head to tail. He stood as tall as a horse, with long legs and sandy-colored fur. "Can I touch?" He nosed her hair, which she took as a yes. Bending down, she lifted one of the massive paws, gazing at the sharp claws and velvety pads before setting it back on the ground. "Talk about beautiful." She stood straight and ran her fingertips over the fur on his chest. "I didn't expect it to be so soft."With caution, she pulled back his lip to get a better look at the razor-edged teeth. Seth sidestepped, whining. She laughed. "Okay, sorry. I can tell you don't like that. Are you ready to go?" He gave a soft yap. "Lead the way."

With another yap, Seth darted through the maze of trunks surrounding them, tail wagging wildly. Laughing again with sheer delight in his speed, Saisha followed him into the gathering dark.


	10. Mujhpe Sanam, Chaa Ne Laga

**All the hugs to cretin for prereading and FatedFeathers and HoochieMomma for beta'ing. Song for this chapter: "Retrace" by Anberlin.**

**# # #**

Once, Jacob had watched Bella like it was his job. He had noticed a lot, enough to surprise her, but he had only been sixteen and so there were things that had escaped him, like how much Bella resembled her dad. Not in looks, since apparently all she had gotten from him were his eyes in that regard. In temperament, though, they shared quite a bit of common ground.

It still took him a while to arrive at the conclusion after the day they spent together, mostly because he was trying _not _to watch her, although it wasn't a very successful effort. He kept thinking he was paying attention to a kid, or another counselor, and then realizing he had somehow redirected his eyes to Bella. This usually happened right as she looked back at him and smiled.

To make matters worse, she put no effort at all into avoiding him. In fact, he could have sworn she went out of her way to find him, because every time he turned around, she was there, not just in his field of vision but asking him questions or silently helping out with anything that required assistance. She must have taken time to do her own work, but she occupied so much of his mental energy that it seemed she never left his side.

"No, seriously," she said in the dinner line, "how much did you grow? Because I used to come up to exactly here on you." Putting her finger on the spot, she traced a short line lower. "And now it's right here."

"I don't know how much," he said, which was a lie, but it kind of freaked him out that she too had marked the place to which her head rose on his body. There was something strangely intimate about her having used him as a standard of measurement. "A few inches, I guess."

She shrugged and changed the subject. Jacob, however, thought about it, and thought about Charlie, overhearing a playful conversation nine years ago and remembering it now. He watched Charlie, and saw Charlie watching Bella out of the corner of his eye. When she looked at her plate and frowned, Charlie already had the salt shaker held out in his hand. When she moved suddenly, almost knocking her fork to the ground, Charlie caught it before it fell. He noticed everything about Bella, but didn't appear to feel the need to interact; he just liked to be around her.

Bella was Charlie's daughter in all the ways that mattered, Jacob realized. No wonder she had been so clumsy about expressing her emotions. By all rights, this should have given him more empathy for her, but instead he felt angry and couldn't figure out why.

That night, she found him running the circumference of the lake. Jake had heard her coming. He kept going, though, until at last Bella called his name and he couldn't pretend he thought she was walking the same path for the hell of it. Drawing to a halt, he waited for her to make it to his side and then started walking again, too restless to stand still.

"Hey," she said after a few moments of silence. "I don't want to pry or anything, but you seem mad." When he didn't answer, she added, "At me."

_Her here-with-me, _the wolf told him with infuriating satisfaction. She should always be at his side. Or just behind.

_You're an offense to women everywhere, you know that? _Jake told it. It didn't respond, of course; feminism went right over its head. "I'm not mad."

"Are you sure?"

He picked up a rock and skipped it across the lake's surface. One, two, three, four, five… "No."

Bella stood quiet, watching the rock finally give in to gravity's pull, sinking below the water. "You can be mad," she finally replied. "It doesn't have to make sense or be justified."

Yeah, now he was sure: completely furious. "I don't need your permission to be pissed off, Bella." He skipped another rock, too hard. It only bounced once. "What do you know, anyway? If you'd been there with me after I left, maybe you'd think it was totally justified."

She nodded, the venom in his voice absorbed by the new calm she wore like a shield. "I bet I would. You want to tell me about it?"

_No. Yes. Stop bugging me and leave me the fuck alone. No, don't you dare leave me alone to deal with this by myself again._

All the emotion blocked the words from being spoken, until she poked a hole in the dam with, "What happened the night you left me? You went home and… what?"

"And they saw you in my head. I was too upset to keep them out. They saw you sitting on the couch in the Cullen crypt with that _thing _sucking the life out of you and they realized what had happened. Before, I'd tried to talk Sam into attacking if Edward bit you, but he wouldn't do it. He didn't want to start a _war_ with the bastards. But when they found out about the demon baby, they all freaked the hell out. They were going to go over there and do their best to kill the vampires. I don't know for sure what they were going to do with you but I was pretty sure you were already too far gone to live if they somehow got the spawn out of you."

He kept using the most pejorative terms he could think of for her child, but those, too, failed to wrinkle her composure. She just listened, head tilted, lower lip caught between her teeth.

"And anyway, Sam was so full of shit," he continued, bitterness seeping into the words. "He had no idea if we could really kill them. From what I saw during the newborn battle, I didn't think it was possible. Not with Jasper, Alice, _and _Edward. He might've gotten all of us killed, just because fucking Edward didn't keep it in his pants. So I had to do it. I had to take over as Alpha. And that meant I had to fight Sam for it."

Now Bella's calm started to drain from her face; she threw a hand over her mouth and stared at him in horror. "Jake—" she mumbled between her fingers.

He spoke over her. "He didn't want to give it up. He didn't even want the damn job but it was the only thing he had, and I couldn't let him keep it because it was going to wipe us out. I had to accept my goddamn destiny and _calling_ and take over the pack so I fought him until I had him pinned on the ground and he was hurt so bad he couldn't stay in his wolf form and then I had to order everyone to stay on the rez and away from you, though I didn't Alpha order, so you could go to hell your own way. Because you wanted to be able to fuck your vampire husband and just couldn't _wait _till he turned you. So thanks for that, Bella. It was really awesome. Exactly the way I hoped my life would turn out: tied to the rez and tied to the pack and all my choices, taken away, pretty much—"

But here he forced himself to stop talking. What was he _saying_?

This wasn't him. He loved his life. He loved his pack brothers and he loved Leah, and once he'd gotten used to being in charge he hadn't really minded that part either, since it meant he could run things the way he thought was right. He hadn't ever wanted to leave the rez. He loved La Push. He loved his dad. And even though the garage was in the red as many months as it was in the black, he loved being a partner and getting to fix things for a living.

This was sixteen-year-old Jake griping, who had been about as much of a dumbass as most guys his age, not wanting his choices made for him as if he were some special flower exempt from the vagaries of fate. Granted, his fate had proven far more dire than most, but nobody he knew had been able to simply ignore the pressures of their life and do whatever the hell they wanted regardless.

Bella, of course, had no idea what epiphany he might be experiencing. Dropping her hand, she took one very small step closer to him. Voice thick with unshed tears, she said, "I am so, so sorry, Jacob. I wondered, of course, but there was no way to ask Charlie, and I was so afraid of hurting you again that I didn't think I should write or call…" She shook her head.

Jacob sighed, an exhalation heavy with self-disgust, and ran his fingers through his hair. "I don't even know what my problem is right now. You've apologized, so what the hell am I so angry for?" Except he wasn't angry, not really, not anymore. He felt stupid and embarrassed and irritable, not angry.

Bella spoke tentatively. "Maybe because nobody ever acknowledged how much you gave up? You're surrounded by people who've had difficult lives. All of you had so much taken away because the Cullens decided to come back to Forks. You were all in the same boat, basically, so that would mean you kind of didn't have permission to complain about how awful _your_ life was. At least your dad wasn't dead, like Leah and Seth's, killed by you phasing in front of him. At least you knew who your dad was, not like Embry. At least you weren't imprinted on a toddler, like Quil. At least you didn't rip your imprint's face apart accidentally, like Sam. Right?"

She'd hit the nail on the head. He shrugged. "Yeah. I guess."

"But Jake, it _was _awful. It was unfair, and preventable, which must have rankled the worst." Bella made a quick movement as if to touch his elbow, and just as quickly pulled her hand back to her. "You had a really hard life and you didn't deserve it. That's worth some anger."

Somehow, the sight of her hand curled up beneath her collarbone, held safely in the grasp of its partner as if to protect him from her touch, hurt. He reached for her wrist and tugged, gently, until she let him draw her closer and he could hold her fingers against his heart. The terrible tension in his chest eased under the brush of her skin.

Bella smiled, but the change in expression jarred some of the tears out of her eyes. Ignoring their trickle down her cheeks, she said, "I remember you pulling my arm exactly that way on First Beach, asking why I kept hugging myself."

He did too. "Neither one of us could hold our shape together right." She was so strong now, compared to that girl on the beach. But still Bella. Still the person who'd made him happy, before the hurting.

"Jake…" Lifting her free hand to lay it next to the one he cradled, she choked out, "I really, really missed you."

The wind picked up, and Jacob let go of her hand, but only so he could push her hair back out of her face. Leaving his fingers tangled in the shining strands, he whispered, "Me too." Powerless to resist, he leaned down to kiss one tear from her jaw. "Don't cry, honey." Another kiss, this time to her temple. "Don't cry."

Bella shivered and sighed, turning her head to press her face to his.

Straightening, he pulled her into an embrace. They stood still, only the night noises keeping them company, until the moon clouded over and rain began to drip down. Without another word, Bella freed herself from his embrace and backed away, smiling, naked hope illuminating her countenance. He smiled back until she turned and hurried in the direction of her bed.

The abrupt resolution made so many things fall into place that he couldn't process it at first. He walked back to the cabin like an automaton, and fell asleep only to dream of kissing Bella on the side of a mountain.

_That should have been our first kiss, _he heard himself whispering to her when he woke up. His mouth tingled with remembrance.

_Her. Want? Take, _the wolf said again.

Maybe he would. If she wanted that too.

The uncertainty plagued him all through breakfast, until at last Bella said, "Where are you? Your mind's a thousand miles away."

_And nine years, _he wanted to say, but instead just shrugged.

She followed him out after they finished eating, and he grabbed her hand before she veered away toward her office. "Come with me for a sec?"

Turning bright red, she followed him around the corner of the mess hall, which backed up against the woods. When he was relatively sure no one was looking right at them, he said, "What did you mean the other day, when you asked me how honest I wanted you to be?"

Her color darkened even more, but she managed to answer. "I meant that there are, um, things I could tell you that are true but that might kind of force you to make a decision."

Jacob almost laughed. All he did was make decisions, on other people's behalf as well as his own. Bella was the one who hated doing that, not him. "Tell me."

Bella nodded, and then stood there with her mouth half-open for a moment. Her heart was pounding so fast it sounded like a hummingbird's.

"Uh, Bella? You have to use words."

She took a deep breath and released it in a sigh. "I'm scared to say it. What if you don't believe me?"

"You said you were telling the truth, so I will." Not to mention what the werewolf polygraph test would tell him.

Leaning against the wall as if she needed the support, she gulped, then blurted, "I really like you. I mean, as more than a friend."

On the one hand, he had expected her to say something along those lines, but on the other hand it was such a shock to hear it actually spoken out loud that he couldn't muster up a response.

She must have interpreted his silence as skepticism, because she plunged forward. "I know you have to be wondering if maybe this is just leftover unfinished business from when we were teenagers or if I'm trying to make it up to you in a totally misguided way, but I promise I'm self-aware enough now to know the difference. And trust me, Jake, over the past few weeks, I've seen more than enough of who you are now to infatuate any woman."

Jacob grinned. "Is that right? Any woman, huh?" Relaxing now that the confession had been made, he moved closer, resting one hand on the wall over her head so he could better see her upturned face.

"Any woman interested in men, anyway," she clarified, smiling shyly. "You're pretty awesome."

"I am?"

With a laugh, she gave his chest a shove, which of course didn't have any effect. She left her hand there anyway. "You know that already. You were born convinced of the fact."

"Nah, but I learned pretty well. Okay, good. So you like me even though that makes you a cradle-robber." She gave a gasp of outrage, but he ignored it. "I guess I can see if I can get into the whole cougar thing."

"Two years does not a cougar make," Bella objected. The impact of the words was somewhat reduced by the way she caressed from his collarbone down to his stomach. "Anyway you looked twenty-five when you were only sixteen, so that means _you're_ the perv. Your body's been a quarter of a century old for way longer than mine."

"Hmm, good point. You know what that means, don't you?"

Eyes alight with amusement, she shook her head.

In the back of his head, warning bells were clanging, but he ignored them in favor of ruffling her hair and standing straight. "I won nine years ago. You lose, loser. Get ready to pay the penalty."

"What's the penalty? Jake!" He jogged away with a wave over his shoulder. "Jake, what penalty? I don't remember anything about that!"

( * * * )

Jacob threw himself wholeheartedly into his job for the first time since he had arrived, free from the distraction of melancholy memories. He wasn't free at all from the distraction of infatuation, however, or rather the knowledge of Bella's infatuation. His own emotions were more of a mystery to him. He just knew he didn't feel like shit for the first time since he'd walked into Bella's office.

The kids noticed he looked different. River tried to punch his shoulder before he evaded her so she wouldn't fracture her hand. "Hey, there's the Jacob I remember!" she said with a bright smile.

"Somebody been trying to take my place?" he asked, pretending to be puzzled.

"Nope, you've just been weird this year. I like it better when you're happy."

"Yeah, me too. Quit fooling around and grab that base for me."

"It's because of Bella, isn't it?" she said as she jogged out to grab third base.

Jacob froze. Caught. "Huh?"

"Don't lie. You _like _her." She managed to turn the word into three syllables.

"You totes do," Josh chimed in, handing over some softballs.

"Don't say totes; you'll get your ass kicked," River admonished him.

Jacob busied himself putting the equipment back so he could avoid their eyes. "You two are ridiculous. I don't know what you're talking about and if I did I wouldn't discuss it with a couple of delinquents."

"We're here 'cause we're not delinquents!" River protested. "I'm like the only person I know who hasn't gotten frisked this year! Though it wasn't always their fault."

"Don't try and distract me." Jacob threw a towel at her. She caught it and threw it back, laughing. "Go eat dinner. I know you're starving."

They obeyed, though not without some more ribbing as they retreated. Jacob hurried to return the baseball gear back to the shed, but before he got across the field he heard a familiar hesitant footstep.

"I've been told that you like me," Bella said when he turned to grin at her. "Or, no, sorry, I think it's that you _li-i-ike _me."

"Yeah, I've heard that too." Jacob slung five bags over one shoulder and extended his free hand to her. "I didn't talk to them about it; they figured it out."

She shyly intertwined her fingers with his. "I don't think you've ever been very interested in hiding the way you really felt."

"True." Shortening his stride to allow her to keep up, he started back toward the equipment shed. "Probably in this case they can see it better than I can."

"Why's that, do you think?"

He thought about it for a moment. "I'm still chickenshit, I guess."

"Eh. I don't know if I'd call it that. You wouldn't be very smart if you hadn't learned from past experience to be cautious."

"I can't be that smart, then," Jacob said without thinking, and Bella swallowed, ducking her head while her skin went cold in his grasp. "No." Dropping the bags, he turned to her. "No, that's not what I meant. I'm sorry."

"Probably a part of you meant it. People don't just say things like that if they don't think it on some level, Jake."

Jake grabbed her elbows to pull her close. She allowed it, but kept her gaze fixed on his. He said, "Listen. It's true, I'm wondering about how much of a dumbass this makes me, to do this with you here and now with an audience of a bunch of kids plus our dads. But on the other hand? Bells, it's been _years _and I haven't found anyone else who…"

He trailed off, searching for the right way to say it. Bella stepped closer still and slid her arms around his waist. Momentarily distracted by worry about repercussions for that much PDA, Jake focused on listening for intruders, and then relaxed. They were alone on the path, unobserved by anybody but wildlife.

"Who what?" Bella finally asked.

"I guess who was my best friend first," he admitted, feeling stupid now that it was put into words. It sounded like something that belonged on a crappy romance cover.

Bella, though, didn't look like she wanted to laugh at him. Instead she pressed her face to his chest and said, muffled, "I wish I hadn't screwed that up so badly."

"It's okay." She shook her head, still not looking up. He nuzzled her hair, growing distracted by the way her body felt pressed to his. It had been a _really _long time. "Hey. I don't want to think about that shit right now. I just need you to know, I want this too. Maybe more than you."

He could feel her smile before she spoke. "I don't know about that."

Picking up the bags again, he led the way to the shed and finally put the stuff in its place, with Bella's help. When it was all where it belonged, he turned to see her watching him with a funny expression on her face. "What?"

"What's the price I have to pay for losing?"

It took him a second to figure out what she meant, and then he laughed. "I haven't thought of one. Maybe I should let you pick your poison. No dessert for three days? Running around the mess hall holding hands with a boy? Confessing to Charlie what you've done?"

"I don't think the usual camp penalties apply to us adults," she demurred, moving closer.

Jacob watched her approach with wariness. The whole notion of Bella as instigator was new, and he was used to making the first move in every area of his life. "Well, what do you think an adult penalty would be?"

"Hmm. Not sure. I'd offer to kiss you, but that's hardly punishment for _me_."

"Now _that _depends."

For an instant, she faltered, but then a speculative light dawned in her eye. "Yeah?"

_Not scared, _the wolf noted, pleased. It liked submission but it hated fear. Jacob was pleased too; he had enough of others being automatically nervous around him for a variety of superficial reasons. The idea of Bella, of all people, physically afraid of him was intolerable. "Yeah. C'mere."

Obediently, she slid her arms around his neck and waited.

Now that the moment had come, Jacob had to fight off a sudden attack of nerves. The sixteen-year-old boy still was staring at the eighteen-year-old girl in suspicion as she hysterically begged him to kiss her. _We're not those people anymore, _he told himself. He nearly believed it.

"Uh, Jacob? You have to use your mouth."

He snorted, and bent to kiss her with lips still curved up in amusement. For a brief second it was a real-life flashback, and he half-expected to hear a call from Sam, and then memory faded beneath the impact of what was happening now. Bella's answering pressure was hesitant, as if the way he kissed were a foreign language she barely spoke, but within seconds her grasp on his shirt tightened and she stood on her tiptoes, opening up to him.

Jacob felt the parts of his heart he had kept for himself slipping through his grasp like sand held too tightly, escaping his control to fall where they would. He had been right to fear this, but he cupped her face with his hands anyway and let the scent of her skin and the soft heat of her mouth remind him why he'd fought so hard for it in the first place.

Bella wasn't satisfied with just kissing, though; her hands slid beneath his shirt and dug into his back, and she rubbed her stomach with clear intentions against where he was growing hard. Jacob had exactly the same idea, but there were other points of view on that subject. He broke free to warn her, "Your dad's coming. I think he's going for the 'world's best cockblocker' title."

Bella stared, and he wondered if she had understood what he said, but then she spun to press her back to Jacob just before Charlie appeared in the door.

"You two are gonna starve if you don't get going. What are you, teenagers again?"

Grateful for the camouflage, Jacob wrapped one arm around Bella's waist. She breathed a nervous chuckle as he pulled her more tightly to him. "Dad! Um… No. Not teenagers. Uh, but I lost the age game."

"Or won, depending," Jacob interjected.

"Old ladies need to eat too," Charlie replied, making a stern face at her before shooting a hard-eyed look at Jacob. Feeling like a delinquent, Jacob released his grip on the Chief's daughter and turned to some spurious task on the equipment shelves.

"Nice, Dad," Bella said with dry approval. "All right, I'm coming. See you in a minute, Jake."

"Yeah."

She followed after her father, but she must have known Jacob would hear her whisper. "You're right. That was mean."

( * * * )

Saisha blinked in shock at her phone. She didn't entertain any delusions that she had read the text message from her grandfather incorrectly, of course, but she still could barely bring herself to believe it. He wouldn't have driven all the way to where he could catch a cellular signal for a joke, though.

After a second, she messaged back, _Kissing? My mom? Are you sure?_

His answer came back almost immediately. _I'm pretty sure. _

Saisha thought about what he'd told her, and then decided it was good news. _Progress! Yay!_

_Yeah, _he replied. _I'd say so._

_Did Mom seem okay?_

_She looks happy._

Excellent. _I think it's working!_ Saisha wished she could tell Edward about this latest development. He might have been impressed with how quickly they were progressing.

_Don't get your hopes too far up, kiddo. Lots can happen._

_I know, but it's good, right?_

A long pause. _It's good._

Saisha wondered if she should say anything else, but Charlie didn't elaborate. Kitty jumped into Saisha's lap and rolled onto her back, batting at one of the bronze curls that descended past Saisha's waist.

"I'm starting to like you," Saisha told her. "But you're still extremely annoying."

Kitty paused and turned her head upside down to meet Saisha's gaze.

"You act as if you need psychological help most of the time. I wonder if I should look into that for Grandpa Charlie?" Saisha grasped the lock of hair and gently bounced it. Kitty, attention diverted, began pawing at the curl again. "Then again, you're not the one talking to an animal you know can't understand."

Her phone buzzed again. She reached for it, expecting to read another message from Charlie, but instead she saw Seth's face smiling at her. _Are you okay?_

Saisha wrinkled up her nose in embarrassment. When they'd gone to the Cullen house, her feelings had proven too strong to handle. Usually she didn't feel the pull between her twin heritages, but in this case she had been torn between freezing with distress like a vampire and crying like a human. The end result had looked bad enough for Seth to try to drag her out. He had texted her every few hours since. _I'm okay. I wish I hadn't acted so ridiculously though._

_It wasn't ridiculous. You miss your dad._

Saisha had long since come to terms with the role her father had played in her birth, but seeing the scene of the surgery had brought it all to mind in far too present a fashion. At the same time, the sight of the familiar rooms and faint whiffs of his scent had made her body feel hollow with grief and longing. Sometimes a perfect memory exacted a cost too great to bear alone.

Of course, she hadn't been alone. _I do, and I'm glad I went even though I reacted badly. But I'm still sorry you had to see it._

A few moments, and then he messaged back with, _I'm glad I was there to help. I think you need to have some fun now, though._

Smiling, she typed, _Fun? What kind of fun? Want to go running?_

The sound of multiple heartbeats and loud voices met her ears just as her phone buzzed again. _Open the back door, Sonny._

Saisha rose and crossed to the kitchen, where Seth, Leah, and a couple of other faces she didn't recognize looked at her through the window. Once she threw the deadbolt back, they crowded past her into the house without asking.

"What are you doing?" Saisha demanded, not really upset but very curious.

"You still haven't seen _I, Robot, _right?" Seth demanded. At her head shake, he said, "You can't come on the rez to watch it so we're going to do it here. That's Collin and that's Brady, by the way. They know all about you."

"It's nice to meet you both. Okay, fine, but—" She stopped talking as Leah slapped a canvas bag down on the table.

"I brought popcorn and candy but I hope you've got drinks."

"Lots of beer," Saisha offered. "Some Coke. That's about it." She mainly stuck to water. Possessing taste buds that could instantly differentiate between the different chemical components of everything she consumed made soft drinks unappealing.

"It'll do. See anything you like?"

Saisha examined the haul Leah dumped out of the bag. "I don't usually—ooh, ultra dark chocolate?"

Leah snorted. "Should've known. Here ya go." She handed it over.

"Which one's yours?" Saisha asked, unwrapping the candy.

"The one with cayenne."

"Should've known," Seth admonished Saisha with a wink. "C'mon, show me which remote to use."

She followed him to the couch and, when she would have answered Brady's plea for help with the microwave, Seth hollered, "Figure it out yourself, dumbass!" and yanked her down to sit beside him. Breathless with the novelty of being grabbed by someone who actually had the strength to pull her where he wanted her, she almost dropped the remote. "All right, Sonny, how do I do this? Or do you just want to do it yourself?"

"I'll call it up." Saisha reached across him for the other remote, which would turn the TV on, and listened to Seth's heartbeat speed up while his respiration grew shallow. She tilted her head in question as she settled back down beside him. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine?" he breathed, not sounding at all certain of the fact.

"Hey. Saisha. Tell me how old you are again?" Leah said from the doorway. She wasn't looking at Saisha, though, but at her brother, a hard-eyed stare that he seemed not to notice.

"I'm eight."

"Is that right. Practically a baby, huh?" Leah ambled over and nudged Saisha's ankle with her foot. "Scoot over. No reason for the hostess to have to sit in the middle seat."

"Oh, I don't mind," Saisha started to assure her, and then slid to make room as Leah plopped down between Seth and her. "Okay."

Seth leaned around his sister to talk to Saisha. "But you're an adult as far as your species goes, right?"

"I'm fully mature, biologically speaking," Saisha affirmed. Seth directed a glance she couldn't read at Leah, but his expression quickly changed at Saisha's next words. "My mom doesn't think I've completed my growth as far as emotional development goes, however."

Leah snorted. "Well. If that isn't a kick in the ass. Yeah, the one with Will Smith. Collin! Help Brady. It's just the popcorn setting for God's sake."

"Hey, Saisha, do you want anything from the fridge?" Collin asked from the door.

Remembering to be careful, Saisha directed an expression of polite interest at him. "No thanks, I'm all right without a drink."

Looking at Seth, she saw the dazed look on his face and nearly cringed, but then checked back with Collin. He seemed perfectly normal as he replied, "Okay, cool," and turned to show the hapless Brady the right buttons to push.

Leah was looking at her as if nothing was wrong too. "You gonna push play? We don't need to wait for those two. They've seen it before."

Saisha pushed play, thoughts racing. During the opening credits, Seth got up to go to the bathroom. Saisha whispered to Leah, "May I ask you something?"

"Yeah, sure." Leah didn't look away from the screen.

"How do vampires look to you werewolves? Do they dazzle you?"

Now Leah did give her a quizzical stare. "That's a really weird question." Saisha shrugged, unable to think of an excuse. "Vampires look like dead people on marionette strings to us. Everything they do is too smooth, until it jerks at the wrong moment. Hell no, they don't dazzle us."

"What about me? What do I look to you?"

"You look..." Leah hesitated. "You don't look bad, like them. But you don't look human. You're _too _perfect, like a China doll. It sets off alarm bells." Another pause, and then she added begrudgingly, "Until we get to know you."

"And if I _tried _to charm you? Like this?" Saisha aimed the full effect of her unguarded smile at the other girl.

Leah looked as though she were trying not to laugh, an effort just as confusing as when her brother attempted it. What was so funny? "Now you look like a _smiling _China doll. Not gonna lie, your teeth are so even it's a little creepy."

Brady, coming back carrying a bowl filled with popcorn, nodded, wide-eyed. "Wow. I mean, sorry. No offense."

Taken by surprise, Saisha giggled and started to reassure him, only to be distracted by Seth's return. He plopped down on Leah's lap. Saisha tuned out their sibling bickering to turn her new revelation over and over in her mind: her dazzling effect didn't work on the werewolves. It only worked on Seth.


	11. Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

**Cretin preread even though she was skeptical about post-BD Jacob/Bella, FatedFeathers beta'd even though she already _wrote _one of the best post-BD Jacob/Bellas, and HoochieMomma beta'd even though she thought this was a Jacob/Renesmee fic. This is how I know they love me. Is it any wonder I'd kiss any or all of them? Song for this chapter: "Cupid de Locke," by The Smashing Pumpkins. Also, look at the pretty new banner! That's evieeden's work and I lurve it.**

**# # #**

"Charlie says he caught you kissing Bella," was the first thing Billy said when Jacob walked into the cabin they shared that night.

Jacob rolled his eyes. "No. He _thought _we were _probably _kissing. I made sure he didn't catch us. Don't you have more interesting things to talk about, anyway? I saw you telling stories to those junior highers today. Did any of them try to push you into the lake yet?"

"I'd like to see the little bastards try." In spite of the grumpy tone, Billy's grin told a happier tale. "They really liked the one about Quil, Embry, the unicorn, and you."

"Dad. You didn't."

"You hope I didn't. Volleyball might be more interesting tomorrow. Anyhow, you gonna tell me about this kissing Bella stuff or am I gonna have to pry it out of Charlie word by word?"

Shaking his head, Jacob headed toward his bed. "I'm not talking about this with you."

"Jacob."

When his dad used that tone of voice, Jacob had to listen. He turned around to face Billy. "Yeah?"

"Are you sure you know what you're doing? You might have forgotten the year after she left, but I haven't." Billy wheeled closer to look up into his eyes. "If this doesn't work out, what're you gonna do?"

Jacob swallowed at the thought. His father's words brought up all his same doubts again, the misgivings that he should by all rights have been listening to when he was with Bella. If it didn't work out… "I'll do what I always do when I break up with someone, I guess. Work harder and sulk a while." At least this time he'd know the breakup hadn't resulted in someone's death. "Quit worrying, Dad. I'm twenty-five, not sixteen. It's fine."

Billy shook his head, but didn't pursue the matter. "Leah emailed me. She wants you to Skype her."

"Okay. Thanks." Jacob went into the bedroom and shut the door behind him, then put earbuds into the computer jack so he would be the only one to hear his beta.

She must have been waiting next to the computer, because she answered at the first ring. "Jacob."

"What's up? Is everything okay?"

Leah hesitated. "Everything's fine, but… we have a situation."

Jacob sighed. "Is that thing killing stuff near the rez?"

A baffled expression flitted across Leah's face, and then enlightenment dawned. "No, she's not killing anything. As far as I can tell she doesn't hunt. That's not the issue. It's my idiot brother that's the problem."

"Seth?" Now that was a surprise. Seth was the one member of the pack who _never _gave him any trouble. "What's he been up to?"

"Mainly, falling in love with Saisha."

Jacob jolted in his seat, fury rushing hot through his skin. "Are you fucking kidding me? That's a sick joke, Leah."

Leah shrugged, but she looked upset. "I kind of wish I was kidding. Jacob, he's really into her. He can't stop thinking about her. I'd think he had imprinted if I didn't know better."

"Imprinting is for the next generation of pups. There's no way he could have kids with Rosemary's Baby. If he's in love with her it's all his own idiocy." Jacob buried his face in his hands, and then ran his fingers through his hair. "Shit. What's the thing think of him? Can you tell?"

"She's not a thing, Jacob." At his dubious look, Leah shook her head. "I know. I don't want to like her, believe me, but even I have to admit she's not bad. Immature, sure, but she's a good kid. As far as what she thinks of him goes, it looks as if she likes Seth but doesn't know what to do with him." Her mouth twisted into a semblance of a smile. "The other night she asked me if it was possible for us to get dazzled by her the way humans are by leeches. I think she was worried about having some sort of unfair advantage."

Her revelation distracted Jacob from the Seth question. "The other night? When did you see her?"

"While I was off patrol duty I went to Charlie's house. I can't let Seth go over there by himself!" she added defensively as Jacob stared at her. "And… I don't hate her. I can understand feeling like a freak and being lonely, okay?"

"You think she's lonely?" Great. Now _he _was calling it a she.

"Well, yeah, I mean, she said there are only a few hybrids in the world, and most of them are in South America and drink blood, so her mom wouldn't let her hang out with them." Leah snorted. "Guess the wannabe-vamp turned out to be a halfway decent parent after all."

"Don't call her that," Jacob said automatically, thoughts racing. "Can you order Seth not to go down there?"

"I could try, but he'll go anyway. I'm just his sister, not his Alpha."

Jacob raised his eyebrows. "Are you saying I'd have to Alpha-order him? I'd never do that to you guys. You know that." Although, if he ever were to do it, this might have been the circumstance to prompt the action.

"I know, it's just… she's little and cute and really innocent, even though she's probably taken enough college courses for three people. Big brown eyes and dimples. He's definitely got a type, whether it's boys or girls, and she's like Seth Kryptonite. I'll see if I can put the fear of Leah into him, anyway." Leah fell silent for a moment, toying with something out of camera range. "This might all be moot. Once her mom moves on, she will too, or at least that's what she seems to think."

_Once her mom moves on…_

Jacob breathed hard to quell the instant dread that roiled in his gut at the idea. When he was certain he could keep his voice even, he said, "I'm just going to wait to worry about this until I can talk to it. Her. As long as she's not killing anybody and Seth isn't sleeping with her—"

"He better not even fucking think about it or I'll send him to patrol in Alaska. She might be grown, but that girl is _young_."

Seth wasn't the only one who liked the demon spawn, Jake wearily noted, but he simply couldn't make himself order them away until he'd had a chance to see with his own eyes. "Fine. Then just let it lie. I'll be home in another week anyway."

"Is Bella going to be with you?"

That question could be taken a lot of ways. Jacob decided on the easiest. "She needs to go to Forks to get her daughter and her car, so she'll be with us, probably."

"Uh-huh." Leah tilted her head to examine him. "I wish I could get you to phase right now."

Jacob deliberately deflected. "I sort of wish I could. Too many people around, though."

"You know that's not why, Jacob. What are you not telling me? I need to know."

"If you needed to know, I would've already told you, Leah." He suppressed a groan at the thought of phasing again. Alpha shield or not, Leah somehow always wiggled her way into the thoughts he most wanted to hide.

"Yeah, sure. If you come back holding hands with little Miss Leech-Lover then I'm going to flip my shit. You know that, right?"

"Believe me; nobody hates leeches more than Bella these days."

Leah made a skeptical noise and disconnected before he could call her on it.

"What the hell am I doing?" Jacob asked himself in the silence she left behind, but he didn't find an answer, except from the wolf, who said about Bella, _Like her._

_I know you do. That doesn't exactly help anything._

The wolf wasn't interested in pursuing that line of conversation.

Bella sat next to him at breakfast and whispered, "Did you sleep like crap last night or was it just me?"

"I'm so damn tired," he replied, shoveling his food into his mouth. He had finally fallen asleep just a couple of hours before dawn and barely made it to his scheduled cooking duty in time.

"I'm nervous," she confessed, picking at her food. After a second, she shoved her tray at him. "Here. I'm not hungry and you obviously are."

Jacob picked up her tray, scraped half of her food onto his, and then pushed it back in front of her. "You need to eat."

"Yeah." She put a tiny bite into her mouth and chewed. "Are you mad at me?"

"Nah. Just freaked out."

"Me too. Maybe we should make out some more and that'll fix it."

Snorting with laughter, Jacob turned to face her at the same time she aimed a wicked look in his direction. He cocked an eyebrow at her. "I'm kind of worried about the advice you're giving these kids if that's the best solution you can come up with."

"Oh, I don't really give them advice. I just try to help them come up with their own best solution and explore alternatives if necessary. Us, on the other hand? That approach won't work with us."

"Right." Jacob took another bite of eggs and chewed while he thought. "Yeah, guess making out's the only real answer."

Bella giggled. He could still remember the first time she had giggled when she came to the rez, pale and depressed and wanting two death traps she called "motorcycles" fixed up. It sounded different now. Less reluctant. "It's good to know that after nearly a decade we can be adults about this."

"That's the first thing I'll think of when I remember this conversation. 'Adult.'"

"Hey." She elbowed him lightly. When he looked back at her, she asked, "We're friends again, right?"

The words made his chest hurt, but for once it wasn't panic. He didn't want to define what the emotion behind it actually _was,_ but it didn't seem bad. "Yeah. We're friends."

"That's good. Because I hate when you're mad at me. It's been a bad nine years that way. I know that sounds dumb but I can't think of any fancier way to put it."

She still detested even the hint of discord. Honestly, sometimes it was like talking to a girl version of Charlie, except the thought led to an image of kissing a girl version of Charlie, and then he wanted to gag. "It's okay. It'd probably go over my head anyway if you tried. I'm not mad at you anymore, though. Promise." Reaching under the table, he patted her leg. "I really like you too, you know." In fact, he thought maybe he liked her better now than when they were teenagers. Then-Bella had been a very cute problem that needed a solution, and then a brick wall that he couldn't stop flinging himself against, but she wouldn't have matched who he had become. Now-Bella had done what might have seemed impossible, raising a mutant daughter mostly on her own and choosing meaningful work, plus she was a lot more aware of how she affected the people around her.

She leaned into him for a bare moment before rising. "See you at lunch, I guess."

"That seems like a really long time," he blurted before he could control the impulse.

Bella laughed. "I know, right?"

It turned out he was wrong; the morning passed quickly, mostly because he was concentrating so much on what he was doing, for fear of doing the kids a disservice, that he forgot to obsess about Bella. As soon as he let the grade-schoolers head toward the mess hall, though, the wolf asked, _Her?_

"Give it a rest, already," he muttered, and then jerked his head up as Bella's footsteps drew near. For once, he broke the rules and used some of his supernatural speed to finish cleaning up in record time, so by the time she cleared the tree line he was ready to go. He managed to get through lunch without losing track of what was going on around him.

Bella undid his good intentions by kissing his shoulder before she left for her afternoon sessions, and that was it. He couldn't think about anything else for the rest of the day. By the time lights out finally arrived he had started pacing back and forth in front of his cabin door, debating with himself on whether or not he should go find her.

Fortunately, she came to him.

"Hey—" she barely managed to get out before he leaped to grab her hand. "Whoa. Okay, so you did miss me as much as I missed you."

"This sucks. Feeling like a teenager again is for losers," he complained, but his words were muffled because he was already nuzzling her neck.

Bella brushed her lips across his temple. "Yeah. Having no private space like a teenager especially. Damn it, and here's the rain. I can't take it."

"You won't melt," he protested, swiping a few drops from his eyes. "Or would you rather we go back in there and hang out with our dads? I'm thinking they'd treat it like a sporting event. 'Jake's going for the forward lateral.' 'He'd better be ready for a penalty flag.'"

"I'm cold," she complained, but he suspected her shivers had less to do with the rain and more with him caressing her back beneath her shirt.

"Fine. Want to go to the boathouse?"

"Oh my God, it's so pathetic. We really are teenagers, aren't we?"

Billy swung the screen door open to ask, "You guys gonna come in or what? You'll catch pneumonia."

"It's _summer_, Dad. Plus I don't get sick."

"Actually, I just remembered, I left my sunglasses at the boathouse," Bella said before Billy could argue. "We're going to go get them now."

"Why the hell would she bring sunglasses?" Jacob heard his dad complain as they walked away. "We're in the middle of the rain forest!"

Jacob laughed. At Bella's questioning look, he said, "Dad doesn't buy your excuse."

"He doesn't have to buy it; he just has to let us walk away with a teeny bit of dignity without asking if we're using protection."

"Oh man." Jacob shuddered at the unwanted memories that popped up. "Did you ever have that conversation? I thought I was going to die."

"My mom started talking to me about condoms when I was a kid. I turned around and started lecturing her about them less than a week later."

Jacob pulled her close to his side, even though it meant he had to barely move his legs as they walked together. "That sounds like you. Or like you used to be."

"I still do that, sometimes. Learn a little bit about a subject, and then feel the need to share it with everyone I know without asking if they might already know more than I do. I guess it helps that I don't know nearly as many people as I did when I was a kid. I can't believe I used to think I didn't have any friends."

"Me neither."

Bella leaned her head against him. "I always knew _you _were my friend, Jake. Even when you were so angry at me. You were the only person in my life I felt safe enough to fight with, you know? I was just too dumb to understand what that meant."

For a minute, he had to struggle with a flare of anger, but then the adult side won out and he nodded. "I know. I think that a lot of people make that mistake, though. Of confusing really strong feelings for true love."

"I think you're right. It comes up in therapy sessions sometimes."

"This is your first real job doing this, right?" At her nod, he asked, "How's it feel?"

"I like working with the kids, though it's really frustrating to realize that soon they'll be heading home to difficult situations and a lot of this effort is probably going to be undone. You know what's weird, though? The best part is making my own money. Saisha and I have massive child support payments from the Cullens, but I couldn't keep a steady employment history with her growing so fast, plus she needed constant supervision for years."

He wasn't interested in hearing about that. "How'd you finish a graduate program with all the moving you had to do?"

"You'd be amazed how people believe what computers tell them is true, and with my contacts from my marriage to Edward I didn't have any problem getting people to hack into the university and convince them I'd been a student the whole time. I did do all the coursework, though. That part is real."

"Well, glad we didn't get someone totally unqualified for the job. Holy shit," as the rain picked up, "you're going to be soaked by the time we get there."

"I already am." She started walking faster. "Of course, so are you, but it doesn't look bad."

Jacob didn't have any complaints about the view either, but he could tell the chill had started to bother her, so he hurried too. When they finally got into the boathouse, Bella sighed in relief and started wringing out her hair. "Your dad was right. I'll be lucky if I don't catch pneumonia."

"You should definitely get out of those wet clothes," Jacob said with mock solemnity.

Snorting, Bella gathered her shirttail into a twist, letting the water drip out on the boards beneath her feet. "You haven't even taken me out on a date yet. Wouldn't it be kind of slutty for me to let you get me naked this early in the game?"

"I wouldn't be getting you naked! _You _would be getting you naked. Totally different." When she made a skeptical noise, he pressed, "Plus, I spent _weeks _with you back in the day without trying to do more than hold your hand, so you've got all the non-slutty behaving you need. Think about that sexual tension going to waste. It'd be a shame."

Bella opened her mouth as if to argue, and then snapped it shut. After a moment, she tilted her head, shrugging, while her heartbeat sped up to a rapid thrum. "Okay."

Strangled by surprise, Jacob managed to croak out, "Okay?"

"Yeah." She pulled her shirt over her head. "Okay."

He might have stared, but she shivered, and so he crossed the floor in one stride to gather her into his arms. She returned his embrace, and he shivered too. "Bells. You're so cold."

"I know. I always am, even when I'm not doused in rain and scared out of my mind."

"Scared?" His hands moved across her skin, memorizing the feel of her shoulder blades and spine—and also checking to see whether her bra had a back closure or front. "Don't be scared. I'm not scary."

Bella leaned back to meet his gaze. "It's been nine years for me, and the last time was with a vampire."

"Holy shit." Although, now that he thought about it, it made sense. Who would she have been able to welcome into her life, with what's-her-name having to be taken care of and the regular relocating and everything else? And it wasn't like Bella would go for a one-night stand. "No wonder you're freaked out."

"Yeah. Um… kiss me? So I can stop thinking about it?" Her fingertips sketched faint lines on his back, growing warmer the longer he held her.

"Maybe I'll just kiss you because I like to," he teased, and did.

Now that he understood how long she had waited, her instant reaction made sense, but understanding didn't reduce its impact in the slightest. Her quick intake of breath, the dig of her nails into his waist, and the eager response of her mouth all combined to set him alight. _This _was what he'd tried to forget the most, with the least success: the way Bella Swan could provoke the strongest emotional and physical response he'd ever experienced, with one quick touch. His knees grew weak when she moved to kiss his neck. Before he could stumble and embarrass himself, he pulled her to a pile of deflated rafts and sat, drawing her down to straddle his lap.

"Honey," he breathed against her shoulder. "Trust me; you have _nothing _to worry about."

"Take this off," she pleaded, trying to pull his shirt up with shaking hands. "I need to touch you."

Obediently, he drew it over his head.

"Oh, _Jake,"_ Bella said, reverent approval all over her face.

He wanted to laugh, but then she kissed his chest and he groaned instead. Rising up again, Bella unsnapped her bra and let it drop to the floor, and then he had her breasts right where he wanted them. He licked the curve of the closest one, enjoying her answering moan. His tongue scraped across two odd bumps.

He jerked back. Bella gave him a puzzled look, and he tried to cover his curiosity by lifting his palm to her other breast. As she pressed her hand to his, letting her eyes drift closed, he really looked at her for the first time.

Her skin looked ravaged.

One long scar crossed her pelvis, from hip to hip, like a grotesque parody of a smile. Long stretch marks, silver to his night vision, ran from her ribs to below the low-cut waistband of her jeans. Her arms sported needle tracks up and down their inner slopes, which explained why her sleeves usually came down past her elbows. And the bite marks. Everywhere, the bite marks, all over her torso, faint wounds that could have only have come from one source, not to mention the same old silver mark he remembered from years past.

The wolf growled at the sight of the frigid crescent adjoining her palm.

"Jake?" Bella whispered, eyes opening again.

Realizing he had stopped moving, Jacob forced himself to act, rolling so that she lay beneath him. "If I had known…" He paused long enough to drag his tongue against her nipple. The way she arched up, her taste, and her quick intake of breath, brought him back to reality. Pretty Bella, half-naked, in his arms. All the pain that _thing _had caused her didn't matter right now. He licked her again. "…how good you'd feel, I don't think I could have waited this long to talk you into taking your clothes off."

"If I'd known it'd feel like _this_ I probably would've started stripping in my office the first day."

He chuckled. "That would have been kind of awesome, not gonna lie." Unable to resist, he kissed the closest pair of scars. Bella sighed with pleasure, so he kept doing it, pressing his lips to each and every spot that silently told the tale of the price she'd paid for the vampire's child. He wound up next to the button of her jeans. This close to his goal, the scent was so enticing as to nearly overpower his tenuous self-control, but her intensifying shivers gave him pause.

Bella smoothed his hair back, away from his eyes, when he looked up at her. "Hey. Much as I'd like to keep going..."

Groaning for a different reason this time, Jacob rested his chin on her belly. "I was afraid you were going to say something like that."

"Probably we shouldn't carry the teenager thing too far. A boathouse is no place for a first time." Suppressing the urge to argue that _any _place sounded like a good place right about now, he sat up and handed her bra to her. She refastened it, put her shirt back on, and sighed. "Sorry."

"Don't apologize." He kissed her to sweeten the words.

Cuddling into him, Bella said, "It's a good thing we only have a week till we get back to Forks. Please tell me you bought a bigger bed."

"King size. It's the only thing that fits in the room, and there's only six inches between the frame and the door, but it's totally worth it."

"Thank _God. _Okay. I can wait that long." She let her palm move to cover the zipper of his shorts, pressing to where he still was hard. "Probably."

Jake nudged her hand away. "If you keep doing that, _I _won't be able to wait. So, um, how long do you think you'll stay in Forks?"

"It depends. I've been texting Saisha but she's only talking to my dad right now so I can't find out if she likes it there. If she does, we'll stick around." Bella stretched to kiss his jaw. "Even if she doesn't, we'll work something out."

Relief poured through him at the reassurance. "Okay. Good."

Bella smiled up at him. "I'm in this for real. Promise."

Jacob returned to their cabin to find Charlie and Billy studiously discussing the latest game as if they hadn't been picking apart Bella's and his smallest interaction like a couple of seventh graders.

( * * * )

Seth's low-voiced call distracted Saisha from the view atop the highest pine on the shore of Lake Crescent. Careful to stay quiet, she answered, "Up here, slowpoke."

Within a few minutes, Seth joined her and whistled. "Wow. I can see why you didn't want to come down. It hardly ever gets this clear." Looking over at her, he added with a smile, "I'm glad, though. Any chance I get to see you lit up like that."

Saisha felt the blood rush into her face and dropped her gaze, unsure of how to respond.

"Hey, Sonny." He nudged her with his elbow. "Sorry. I didn't mean to embarrass you."

"You didn't." She wasn't embarrassed, she was curious, and couldn't think of a way to ask her questions that wouldn't amuse him. If he laughed, she was going to run home and not come out again till her mom came back. "I was wondering..."

"Yeah?"

"Do the werewolves mate for life in the pack? How many girls are there besides Leah?"

"Some of us mate for life. It's called imprinting." His lip curled up in a sneer as he pronounced the word. "But there are no other girls in the pack. Just my sister."

"Oh." On the one hand, that was good news, but on the other... "What's imprinting?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it." Seth shook his head. "It's a really weird compulsion. Like, the wolf sees somebody and then all of a sudden nobody else matters. She's his whole life, from then on, and he can't even think of himself anymore. Just her. I don't think the other guys would say I'm describing it right."

Ignoring a sudden spike of nausea in her gut, Saisha ventured, "It's involuntary?"

"Yeah. And it doesn't matter if you were in love with someone else before, either. It just... changes you. It's mind control."

"That sounds terrible." The nausea grew. "Why do you think it hasn't happened to you?"

"Not sure." He shrugged. "I used to think it was because I was gay."

For some reason, that revelation made her feel even sicker. What was wrong with her? Maybe it was just disappointment about having read him so incorrectly. Clearly she still had a lot to learn. "Oh. You're gay."

"No, that's what I thought then. I was really happy about it, actually. Since the big theory is that imprinting is to make a new generation of babies with the werewolf gene, I hoped it meant I wouldn't imprint. I don't think that's why I didn't end up doing it, though."

More confused than ever, Saisha asked, "Why don't you think so?"

"Well, according to all our legends, imprinting was supposed to be really, really rare. But it wasn't for our pack. Sam, Jared, Quil, Paul... they all imprinted. We were on pins and needles wondering who would be next. But then, the Cullens moved away... and no more imprints. I think the gene for imprinting might get activated when vampires are near, just like the werewolf thing, and since most vampires are nomads it doesn't last long. But the Cullens didn't travel. They stayed. So it wasn't nearly so uncommon." He gave her a guileless smile. "I got lucky, I guess."

"Wait." She sat up straighter and stared at him, terrified. "Oh my God. What if I start more phases or imprints by being here?"

Seth grabbed for her hand before she could completely horrify herself. "No, no, no. It's not going to happen. You don't understand; the sight of vampires triggers this total rage in us that forces the wolf out. You don't make my wolf angry. He likes you."

Oddly flattered, Saisha sat still once more. "Oh."

"Yeah." He patted her arm.

Lowering her eyes, Saisha fidgeted with a clump of pine needles in front of her. "So, um... you're not gay, though?"

"I don't even know what to call myself." Seth laughed, but it sounded frustrated. "I went my whole life without even once being attracted to a woman. All I ever thought about was guys. And then, one day a little after I turned twenty, I realized I had a crush on this girl who worked down at the grocery store in Forks. And... I dunno. I don't fit into any good boxes. I mean, how many Native American bisexual werewolves have you ever heard of?"

"None." Daring greatly, Saisha patted his arm in turn. The muscle bunched and shifted beneath her touch, and for once, rather than mentally noting its function, she instead realized it felt... nice. "You're one of a kind. Just like me."

"Yeah." He folded his arms on a branch and rested his chin on them, turning his gaze outward toward the lake again. "Just like you."

Well, now she practically _had _to ask the question that had been on her mind since their movie night. To make certain it didn't sound too sudden, Saisha counted to five minutes and then asked, "Are you interested in me as a romantic partner?" Seth jerked so violently he slipped from his branch and fell a few feet before catching himself. Laughing, Saisha reached to help him back up to her level. Once he was there, the elevated color in his cheeks made her amusement fade. "Oh no. I'm sorry; did I embarrass _you_?"

"Yeah, but it's okay." He waved away her help and looked down at his feet. "Um... Before I answer that... You said your mom thinks you're not fully mature, right? How old, emotionally speaking, would you say you are?"

If he was changing the subject, that was probably a bad sign. "She says around sixteen. Basically I mature the equivalent of two years for every actual year. But she also says there are lots of different levels of maturity for sixteen-year-olds and I might be more advanced compared to some."

Sighing deeply, Seth shook his head. "I thought maybe that was it. Sonny, I can't do anything with you being that young. Not even tell you whether or not I think of you that way. I mean, sure, you're eight, which is weird, but you're your own species and the rules don't apply to you that way. But sixteen? That's creepy for a guy my age."

For the first time ever, Saisha understood the meaning of one's heart pounding in one's throat. "I'm not human. Those laws don't apply to me."

"But they do apply to me. I'm human enough for that."

"The age of consent in Washington State _is _sixteen!" she protested, blinking back tears. It made no sense that his assertion hurt so badly but it _did._

Seth chuckled. "Which would make me still _way too old _for you. Were you hoping I wouldn't think of that?" At her shamefaced nod, he said, "I think that might prove my point."

Now it was Saisha's turn to blush. "I'm sorry." She knew he was right, but it still made her chest ache and eyes sting with heat. Vampires usually experienced only one emotion at a time. Too many at once, and her vampire half didn't know how to handle the human flood.

"It's okay. I understand. I was your age once. Or twice? Whatever."

"That makes it even worse!" she exclaimed. Her voice sounded so strange that she snapped her mouth shut.

"I don't mean it to. It's just that I can't be that guy. It's bad enough watching Quil wait around for Claire to grow up. He imprinted on her when she was only two."

Nauseated for a whole new reason, Saisha said, "That's disgusting."

"Yeah, he can't help it but it is. Also, Leah will kick my ass. She's already threatened."

Afraid of the answer, but unable to stop herself from asking, Saisha said, "Does this mean we can't be friends anymore?"

"No, no no no." He almost patted her hand again, but at the last second opted for her shoulder. "It doesn't mean that at all. We should totally still be friends. Just... friends with a _group _around us."

Saisha bit her lip, and then burst out with, "That's so unfair!"

There it was again: the look that meant he was trying not to laugh at her. She didn't see what was so darned amusing about her being sad. "Well, how about this? Why don't you run it by your mom? If she's okay with it, then we'll take another look. But if she's not, and I'm warning you now that I think she's not going to be, then we'll just drop it for a while. If you want, after six months or a year, if you're still even considering it, you can talk to her again. But I'm not going to bring it up."

"Fine." She already knew there would be absolutely no way Bella would approve anything of the kind. With a petulant kick, Saisha dislodged a limb from its fellows and watched it crash to the ground. The insects and smaller animals fell silent, trying to gauge the threat she might pose. Folding her arms tightly to her chest, she told him, "I can't have kids, you know. Since you're looking for reasons to avoid me."

"Hey." When she refused to respond, he zoomed around to balance in front of her, faster even than her reaction time. She didn't have a chance to look away from his eyes. "Listen to me. There is _no way _that would ever be a reason to rule you out as a girlfriend. For any decent person. You got it?"

Chastened, she nodded.

"Good. Now, let's get you back to the Chief's house. It's late and I have patrol in a couple of hours."

Saisha sat, unmoving. "Don't feel like you need to escort me. I'm perfectly capable of protecting myself."

Seth paused, already halfway down the trunk of the tree, and folded his lips in on themselves, eyebrows clamping down in what looked like worry. When he spoke, though, his tone held nothing but teasing. "I'm not escorting you. I need you to keep me company. Did I forget to mention I'm scared of the dark?"

The joke eased the knot of humiliation in her chest enough that Saisha could follow him to the ground. She raced ahead and beat him to the back of her grandfather's house by a full minute. Unlocking the door, she started to go inside, but he ran up before she could close it behind her, catching the hem of her dress in his teeth.

"I'm not in the mood for play," she said with great dignity. "Please let go of me."

Delicately, he released his hold on the fabric and then cowered before her, whining.

"Go home. You have patrol."

He folded his paws over his nose and peeped up at her, thumping his tail on the ground.

"No. I-I'm not even sure I want to be friends with you _anyway._"

With a yelp, Seth rolled over on his back and angled his head to look at her upside-down, just like Kitty, and Saisha couldn't be upset anymore. "_Fine. _We're friends. Happy?"

Leaping to his feet, Seth made a noise that sounded affirmative and then bounded away toward La Push.

( * * * )

Deciding he'd better keep his distance or he'd end up doing something stupid like persuading Bella to let him fuck her in a canoe, Jake restricted their visits to the cabin. He ended up playing a lot of card games with the two older men and his new girlfriend. By the time Saturday rolled around and he'd finished cleaning everything and saying goodbye to all the staff, he was so antsy he could barely stay in his own skin.

Charlie sat in the backseat with Billy again, so Bella and Jacob could talk, but the closer they drew to the rez, the more distracted Jacob grew. He could feel the consciousnesses of the other werewolves pressing more firmly against his own with each passing mile.

"You okay?" Bella asked more than once.

"Sure. Fine. Just ready to be home," he replied every time, but he pushed down harder on the accelerator till Charlie cleared his throat with a significant look.

Finally, they pulled up into Charlie's driveway. Jacob got out before the front door even cracked open, busying himself in the trunk with Bella's suitcase.

"Grandpa Charlie!" he heard, but he forced himself not to look. It had been so long since his last phase, he wouldn't have been surprised if the sight of the mutant forced the wolf into being. Still, she didn't sound dead, and her scent wafting on the breeze was actually intriguing rather than repellent, so maybe it would be okay.

"Hey," Bella murmured, coming around the corner of the car. "I told you, she's not like them."

He should have known she would spot his hesitancy. "I know. I'm sorry."

"It's okay; just… give her a chance, okay? For me, if not for her own sake."

Jacob straightened and looked directly at her. "I will. I promise."

With a smile, she reached to pat his arm. "You're awfully good to me; you know that?"

"That's because I love you," he said without thinking.

Bella's jaw dropped. "_What_?"

Well, now that he'd said it, he wasn't going to pretend he hadn't. "I—"

"Jacob? This is the first time you've met Saisha, isn't it?" Charlie said, and Jacob reluctantly turned his gaze to see…

Big brown eyes, just like Bella's.

Those eyes widened as he stared, awash in heat so intense it felt like it would melt his flesh from his bones. The wildfire burned away every previous attachment, turning them all to ash blown away in a whirlwind, while his heart seemed to rip itself from his chest and make its home in her. He staggered, barely catching his balance on the side of the car.

"Hello, Jacob," Saisha said, and the words resonated through him, as if his body were a struck tuning fork forever after vibrating at the pitch of her voice.

He finished what he'd been saying, unable to look away from her. "I love you."


	12. Tanhai Mai Dil, Yaadein Sanjota Hai

**Still with me? Oh good. Thanks to cretin, FatedFeathers, and HoochieMomma for sticking with me too, and prereading plus betaing through all the moaning and rewrites. Song for this chapter: "Hearing Damage," by Thom Yorke.**

**# # #**

The silence stretched thin as a wire until Bella broke it. "No."

"What?" Charlie asked, at the same time Billy said, "Oh, _shit._"

"No." Bella interpolated herself between Saisha and Jacob and gave him an absolutely poisonous look. "No. You need to stay away from her."

Just the thought made him feel as if she'd opened a door to hell and shoved him through it. "I—I—"

"Mom, what's wrong?" Saisha asked, one pink-palmed hand rising to pat her mother's shoulder. "Did you feel that? It was like—"

"She's just a _baby_!" Bella growled at Jacob.

"I'm not a baby!"

"Saisha, _not now_."

"What the hell is going on?" Charlie looked from Bella to Jacob and back again.

"Charlie—" Billy started.

Jacob tried again. "I—Bella, I can't—I didn't know—" He couldn't seem to find the right words. What was he going to do? At the same time, unstoppable happiness thrummed through him: the wolf, delighted to have found the most important member of its pack. The sensation was so powerful that it wouldn't let him think straight. _Saisha. Saisha. Saisha._

"Mom, you're not really going to make him stay away, are you?" Saisha's voice had gone high-pitched with fear. Jacob felt a corresponding stab of emotion in his gut, but he had been Alpha long enough to tell when a feeling belonged to someone else and when it was his own. Expecting the wolf to make its objection known, he instead sensed its attention turning to Bella. If he had been in its form it would have tucked its tail between its legs. _Angry, _it noted. Saisha continued, "You two have only—"

"He's not safe for you!" Bella shouted, and then snapped her mouth shut, the furious color draining from her cheeks to leave her pale as her daughter.

Jacob could feel the initial flush of the imprint evaporate in the same moment. "Bells." He swallowed, searching whatever reassurance he could provide. "I would never hurt her. You know that." _Please _let her know that.

"She's too young!" Tremors overtook Bella's fragile frame, shaking her so badly that if she had been a werewolf, he would have readied himself for her to phase. "She's not—Jacob! This can't be happening." Turning away, she walked a couple of steps and then stopped, as if she weren't sure her legs would hold her. "This can't be happening," she repeated, sounding lost.

"Mom, _what_ can't be happening? Are you mad at me?" Saisha sounded just as bewildered. Jacob took an instinctive step toward her just as she edged toward him.

"No, honey," Bella replied. Her hands clutched into fists for a moment, and then relaxed. Facing Saisha and Jacob once again, she asked him, "What does this mean for her?"

He glanced at Charlie, who was looking more and more upset. Billy, taking the unspoken cue, said, "Do you want us to go inside, son?"

"Do you need me, Bella?" Charlie asked before Jacob could answer.

Bella looked at him, despair turning her face immobile. Jacob had hoped he would never see that frozen look again. "No, thanks, Dad."

Jacob, Saisha, and Bella waited in silence for Charlie to help Billy into his house. Finally, Saisha asked, "What are you so upset about, Mom?"

Bella shook her head, staring into the middle distance. Her breath fluttered raggedly in her throat, the sound of her distress striking Jacob to the heart. When it didn't look like she could answer, he replied, "Have you ever heard of imprinting, Saisha?"

To his astonishment, she nodded. "Seth told me about it. He said several of the members of your pack have done so… Oh." Her pretty pink mouth fell open in consternation. "Are you saying you've imprinted? On _me_? Is that what that was?"

"Yeah." He couldn't stop the total satisfaction the wolf felt at the acknowledgement from leaking into his voice, and Bella's expression turned murderous again. That wasn't surprising; he didn't even blame her.

What _was _surprising was Saisha's response. She flew across the short space between them and pushed him. "Take it back!" Her anger seeped into his bones.

The wolf, cringing with guilt, told him,_ Bad._ Its perfect friend was angry at it. It didn't understand what was wrong but it knew everything was its fault.

_No shit. This __IS__ all your fault, asshole. _"I can't. I'm so sorry." Well, he was sorry she was angry at him anyway. He couldn't be sorry he had imprinted. The others had told him it was impossible, and it looked like he was no exception.

"No! You can't do this to us—it's not fair!" Balling up one small fist, she socked him in the shoulder. Jacob flinched with shock; it actually _hurt, _physically and emotionally. A tempest of images and emotions spun through him and ebbed just as suddenly. "Take it back! Make it stop! I don't want it!"

Nausea surged through him so powerfully that he nearly vomited at her feet. The ground seemed to heave beneath him. "Please, no," he begged, leaning on the car again. "No."

"You have to. You're ruining _everything_." She hit him again.

When she touched him, that same avalanche of pictures and feelings tumbled into his brain, too quickly even for someone with vast experience at reading others' thoughts to sort. Coupled with her rejection, the impact turned his vision fuzzy and dim. At any minute, he was going to pass out. This was what Sam had endured, all those weeks when Emily refused him.

"Saisha." Bella didn't put herself between them, but she did wrap her arm around her daughter's waist and step back, tugging Saisha with her. Saisha allowed herself to be pulled along. "You need to stop. I've told you, we don't hit."

"I'm not a child, Mom!" Saisha's voice shook.

"Then don't act like one. Just… just hold on. Let me talk to Jacob." With clear reluctance, Bella added, "This isn't his fault, either."

Jacob's throat tightened with Saisha's unreleased sobs. She choked out, "I'm going inside with Grandpa." Pulling a phone from her pocket, she hit a button.

Jacob heard Seth's voice on the other end of the phone, asking, "What's up, sunny?" before the door slammed shut.

Great. She had Seth on speed dial and he had a nickname for her. This should end well.

"Jacob."

_Not angry? _the wolf asked hopefully.

_Keep wishing, buddy. _Jacob dared to glance up at Bella and saw that her eyes were overflowing, tears pouring down her cheeks and dripping from her chin. Forcing himself to speak first, he said, "This has to be your worst nightmare."

She sniffled and dragged her palms down her face impatiently. "No. My worst nightmare has _always _been losing her. Worse than losing Edward. Worse than losing Charlie. Worse than losing my ability to have more kids. Worse even than losing you."

Now that the shock was fading, and Saisha was finding a measure of calm, Jacob found it easier to think. "Well, you haven't lost either of us."

Clenching her jaw, Bella spat out, "If you think for one second that I'm going to be okay with being your _mother-in-law_, you have another think coming, Jacob Black."

"I don't think that!" He stepped closer and grabbed her shoulders. "I swear to you, Bella, this isn't—I'm not going to leave you for her. I want you. You, not her."

She stood limp in his grip, avoiding his gaze. "Don't lie. Rip the band-aid off now."

Panic whispered over his skin, and left gooseflesh in its wake. "I'm not lying. It's the truth."

"Yeah?" She finally lifted her eyes. "Tell me how you feel. What do you remember right now?"

Unbidden, the image of his imprint rose in his memory. Pink palms, pale skin, lavender eyelids, long lashes, dimpled smile, curly red hair. Bella's eyes. "She's _perfect_." She laughed despairingly, but he kept going. "She has your eyes. Charlie's hair, but Edward's color. She's little. And strong. My shoulder hurts still. Where'd she get those dimples from?"

"I think her paternal grandmother," Bella whispered. She didn't look hopeful, exactly, but she wasn't hostile either.

With every word, Jacob managed to pull more of his thoughts together. "I'm not thinking of her the way I think of you, Bella."

Bella sighed. "Jake, who among the imprints _hasn't _turned out to be romantically involved with their wolf?"

"Claire," he replied without hesitation.

"How old is she now? Eleven or so?" At his nod, she asked, "And is Quil dating while he waits for her to be old enough for him? Which, by the way, should be _never_ because her parents let him help raise her. That's an imbalance in power that will never fade, not even when she's forty."

Much as he would have liked to tell her otherwise, he had to say, "No. He's not dating. He just… isn't interested in anybody like that. Not Claire, either."

"What about when she's an adult?"

"I don't know." The three words he hated most in the English language.

"What about me?" She lifted her hands to cover his where they still held her. "What happens when you think of being with me?"

Jacob tried to imagine it. Less than an hour ago he would have said it was the thing he wanted most. When he tried to picture it now, though, he couldn't. The wolf was still too strongly in his consciousness, and the wolf couldn't think ahead or plan for the future. Frustrated, he shook his head as if he could somehow dislodge the animal from the man, but Bella took it as a no.

"Well, then." Stepping back, she let her arms fall to her sides. "I guess I've got my answer."

"That's not what I meant."

"You don't know what you mean right now. I can see it written all over your face. I can still read you, Jake, just as well as you can read me. Maybe better. You have absolutely no clue about what you're doing." Biting her lip, she redirected her gaze to her shoes. "In a way, I'm not surprised. I had it coming."

"This isn't some sort of sick karma, Bells."

"Don't call me that."

More than anything else, the apathetic resignation in her voice scared the shit out of him. "Don't. Just, please don't do this."

Bella sobbed, and then slapped her hand over her mouth. Helpless, he watched her pull herself together enough to move her fingers and say in a rush, "I'll get Charlie to help your dad out," before she practically ran into the house.

( * * * )

Saisha ran right past her grandfather and up the stairs, hiding inside her mother's old bedroom. After a flabbergasted Seth managed to calm her down and get the full story from her, or as much as she knew at any rate, his voice became so distant that she said, "Please don't be mad at me too."

"Who's mad at you?" he asked.

She opened her mouth to answer, but suddenly she realized she was crying too hard to form the words. How had _that _happened?

"Saisha," he whispered. "Please don't cry. C'mon. It'll be okay."

"It's not going to be okay!" she managed to sob. "It's not, Seth! You said it was _mind control_! You said it was for life! You should have seen him-he was so happy-and then he looked so sick-and my mom is _furious _at me, she's never going to be able to forgive me, she said she's not mad but she is-" The violent new emotions swelled inside her chest, too big for her body to hold. She heard them leaking into her words. "I don't understand what's happening right now!"

"No, no, no, that's not true, she knows it's not your fault," he soothed, but it was as if the imprint had opened her ears to a previously unknown world, and she deciphered the uncertainty he tried to hide from her.

Saisha started to contradict him. She stopped herself when the front door opened. Billy Black was leaving. "I have to go. I have to go talk to my mom."

"All right. I'll, um... call me if you want, later."

"Okay." Hanging up, Saisha crept silently from the room and descended the stairs, careful to avoid any creaky spots in the wood.

Charlie spoke, and she froze. "You gonna tell me what that was all about back there, Bells?"

Bella sounded muffled. "I-I can't. I'm sorry."

Charlie remained silent for a long moment. "I wish you could trust me with some of this, Bella. It's not as if I don't know you've got a lot of weird shit in your life."

"I know you do, Dad."

Raising her eyebrows, Saisha held her breath and listened.

"Then why can't you let me in on it?" Charlie's voice rang with clear frustration. "I'm not asking for much, here, honey. Just not to be lied to. And maybe for you to tell me what you can about your life."

"That's the thing. I can't!" Bella's voice cracked as she began to cry. "None of the secrets I know are mine! They're all about _other _people and I can't tell _anyone _because it'll hurt _them_! I wish I could tell you too; believe me, you would be the one I told first."

"Okay. Don't cry, Bells. C'mon, sit down. You want some water?"

"No thanks." Bella sniffed. "I guess you're probably not surprised. I know you weren't a big fan of Jacob and me trying again."

"Now, that's not true." Saisha heard Charlie sit down on the couch too. "I figured you two should probably at least try to work out your differences."

"Yeah, but you kept interrupting us every time we were alone."

Charlie laughed. "Bells, that wasn't because you were alone with Jacob. I was just looking for you. I hadn't seen my daughter in years. Can you blame me for wanting to make the most of the time we had?"

"Oh." A long pause, and then, "Oh."

Saisha rolled her eyes. Honestly, sometimes she wondered how her mother and Charlie managed to converse at all. But then she remembered what had just happened, and how sad Bella probably was, and felt guilty and ashamed all over again. She stepped down the last three stairs without making any attempt at silence. "Mom?"

Bella lifted her head from between her hands and made a pathetic attempt at a smile. "Hi, honey. Are you okay?"

Shaking her head, Saisha ran to throw her arms around Bella's shoulders. Pressing her face to the crook of her mother's neck, she told her, "I'm so sorry, Mom."

Instantly, Bella pulled her even closer, stroking her hair and kissing the top of her head. "No, no," she soothed. "Don't be sorry. This is _not _your fault. I'm not mad at you, Saisha. I promise."

"But, Mom..." Saisha pulled away just enough to search Bella's face. "What are we going to do? I don't even know what this means."

Bella shrugged. "I have no idea." With a steadying breath, she released Saisha from her embrace and looked from her to Charlie. "What I _do _know is that this is the first family dinner we'll have had in years, and also the first chance I've gotten to cook for my dad in forever. So. Let's just... try to put this on the back burner, so to speak, and focus on having a nice time this evening. Does that sound doable?"

Glancing at each other over Bella's shoulder, Charlie and Saisha gave each other dubious looks before saying to Bella, "Okay." Bella nodded firmly and rose to go into the kitchen.

"Hey, kiddo. Come here." Saisha obediently scooted closer to Charlie and cuddled into his side. Kitty, deciding to make an appearance now that all the drama was over, jumped up into her lap and curled up. Saisha braced herself for another round of unanswerable questions from Charlie, but he only said, "Let's see who's playing tonight," and turned on the television. Unutterably grateful for the distraction, Saisha leaned her head on his shoulder and watched in silence.

( * * * )

Jacob and Billy endured the drive home without speaking, and unpacked in the same wordless state. Jacob fixed dinner, but for once he had no appetite. After he cleaned the kitchen, he knew he couldn't put it off any longer. He went outside, stripped, and phased.

Instantly, chaos burst into his head.

_Ho shit, Jacob!_ Paul cackled with glee. _The mighty Alpha's been knocked down to size by the demon spawn!_

_Don't fucking call her that!_ Seth, and angrier than Jacob had ever felt him. _Goddamn it, Jacob, what the fuck? Is this some sort of Clearwater family tradition now? We find someone we want to be with and then imprinting shoots it to hell? Because that's some major bullshit, right there._

_Maybe it's a mistake. _Only Jared could be that hopeful under the circumstances. _Maybe it's not a real imprint. Maybe she's got some sort of vampire aura that makes you think you imprinted._

Brady and Collin didn't speak, but Jacob could feel their silent skepticism about that theory. They had both been around Saisha enough to know that she didn't have any effect on them.

_Where's Leah? _he asked. First things first; he needed a report from his beta.

_Off getting drunk. I'm sure you can guess why._ Seth's control slipped, and a quick flash of Leah's devastated expression flashed through all their minds.

Jacob envied Sam Uley, at home and never phasing and able to leave all this telepathic drama behind, just because Jacob had wanted to save Bella's life badly enough to challenge him one night. Sam _owed _him, damn it. _Okay, everybody except Seth phase out. I'll talk to you all later._

They dropped out of his awareness one by one until only Seth and he remained. Seth waited in seething silence while Jacob ran across the rez. When they stood face-to-face, the younger wolf bristled.

This could get really tricky, really fast. In this form, the wolf was stronger than the man, and as Alpha, Jacob's wolf wanted to respond to any overt challenge of its authority with a decisive set-down. Those kinds of pack dynamics didn't translate very well back in the human world, though. The first thing he could think to say was, _Sorry._

_Sorry what? Sorry you imprinted? Save it; I know you're not._

_No. I'm sorry for you. Sorry for Bella. _Deliberately, he offered up a slightly censored version of what had happened at the camp between Bella and him. _This isn't something I wanted, either._

Seth sneered, but his hackles went down and his tail went up. _Are you saying you're not going to start dating your girlfriend's daughter? Classy of you, I guess, but what's the point of fighting the inevitable?_

_It's not inevitable. Nothing's inevitable. _Jacob truly believed what he said. He might have been destined to be a werewolf, destined to be Alpha, destined to fight vampires, but he had chosen to shoulder those responsibilities, too, and he'd worked it out on his own terms eventually. His natural stubbornness had kicked in at some point, and now he was focused on finding a solution. _I'm not going to lose Bella over something as stupid as imprinting._

_It doesn't even make any sense! _Seth sat down heavily, whining. _She can't have kids, so what's the purpose?_

_I don't know. _Jake followed suit. He'd run over so quickly that he had failed to take note of his surroundings before, but suddenly the beauty of the night struck him. The clouds were thin in the sky, and the full moon shone down through the evergreens. Small creatures resumed their movements with caution, deciding that Seth and he posed no immediate threat. He breathed deeply, automatically categorizing the scents he recognized. Sea air, pine needles, rain, werewolf.

_I missed it here._

_You always do. _Seth edged closer to him. _Saisha sounded really upset when she called._

_She slugged me a couple of times. Why do you call her sunny?_

Seth saw the sun in Jacob's thoughts and snorted. _Sonny, not sunny. _He showed his Alpha the character from _I, Robot._

_Oh. _Now that Jacob thought about it, she _did _kind of smell like an android. But she was a lot prettier. _You really like her, huh?_

_Yeah._ Sighing, Seth lay down on the dirt and rested his head on his front paws. _I really like her._

_She must really like you too. _Jacob turned the concept over in his mind, surprised to feel no anger, just a rush of protectiveness. _I mean, she told you she can't have kids._

_She knows I'm interested in her. I guess she felt like I should know up front. _With an internal shrug, Seth licked one paw. _I never thought I'd be able to have kids the usual way so it doesn't matter to me._

The words triggered a new thought, but before Jacob could pursue it Quil phased in. _Hey guys! Whoa, why are you both so grim? Jacob, I thought you'd be glad to be—_

_He imprinted, _Seth told him, gloom descending on his thoughts like fog once again.

_Are you serious? Jacob, that's kickass! Who did you—_

Wordlessly, both Seth and Jacob showed him.

_Oh, shit._

_My dad's exact words._

_I bet. _Quil thought about it for another minute. _Well, maybe the other theory's right. Maybe it's not about pups. Maybe it's about soulmates. Maybe you two are supposed to be together._

Before Jacob could express his derision toward that point of view, Seth shot to his feet, snarling so vehemently that Jacob half-expected to see a vampire. _Bullshit, Quil!_

Shocked—Seth _never _got this angry—Quil tried to explain himself. _I just meant that some things are meant to be. There's got to be some kind of spiritual thing looking after all this, right?_

_No. No, there fucking isn't. _Seth looked twice his normal size, all his fur standing straight out. _There's no god or spirits or anything else in charge of this. And if there is, it's still a pile of fucking shit, because then you believe in a god who set my sister up to get her heart broken and my dad to die because me and my sister were so goddamn important to its plan that it didn't care whose lives it tore apart. Imprinting is a motherfucking curse. I don't care what you want to tell yourself. Enjoy your junior higher, Quil. Just don't expect the rest of us to applaud the show._

Quil, normally almost as easy-going as Seth, took off like a shot in their direction, his thoughts too murderous for him to even verbalize them.

_That's enough. _Jacob had never issued an Alpha order in his life, but he was as close as made no difference right now. _Seth, go home. In human form. Quil, I need you to patrol the cliffs._

_Yeah, just in case any flying vampires set down, _Quil snapped, but he turned his path in the right direction nonetheless. _Keep him away from me, Jake._

Seth didn't hear, having already phased out. This was the first time Jacob had ever seen bitterness on his normally affable countenance, and the sight hurt more than he would have imagined. He phased back, too, to say, "Hey, Seth?"

"Yeah." Seth didn't look up from fastening his cutoffs.

Jacob thought about Saisha on purpose for the first time since Bella had asked him about her. _Perfect. Saisha Saisha Saisha, _the wolf told him. But he didn't feel the crippling _need _for her, or her body, that the others did for their adult imprints. Protective, loving, proud—all of those. Was it because, as Leah and Bella had both said, she was so young? Or was it due to something else? He could still think of Bella in sexual terms, though just now when he was stark naked in front of his pack brother would be a spectacularly bad time to do so. Quil couldn't muster up his sex drive at all anymore. "Don't give up yet. If this was a normal thing, I wouldn't be able to even care about Bella, or want to be with her. Just give us a little time to figure out how this is going to work, okay?"

Seth sighed and finally met his gaze. "I won't give up. If anyone could find a way around it, you can."

"I'll do it." Jacob wished he felt as confident as the words sounded. "For all our sakes."

"Jake..." Anger had faded enough that misery scraped Seth's voice raw now. "Even if I have to wait years... she's the _only one _I can be honest with. I know the others don't care but I do. I don't want to be with someone I have to lie to."

Holy shit. Jacob hadn't even considered that aspect of things... but yeah, one of the factors that had always held him back with the women he'd dated had been knowing he would have to hide the truth forever. Unless, of course, he "got lucky" and imprinted. Ha. Ha. Seth and he were so much alike; he should have known it would be an issue. "I understand that. I'll do everything I can."

Seth nodded, then trudged away, his normal bounding step deflated.

No sooner had Jacob phased back than Leah burst in on his consciousness, wordless fury and grief surging and ebbing as she got a handle on it, and then surging again seconds later. She had returned to the rez but obviously was no better for it-all the phasing she'd been doing lately must have messed with her metabolism so the alcohol had no effect.

_Leah, come here._

He sensed hesitation threading through the stronger emotions, but she obeyed, probably because she wanted to rip him a new one in person rather than at a distance. He surprised her, though, phasing seconds before she burst through the trees to stand before him.

Pulling his shorts on, he said, "You gonna phase out?"

She stared at him, the scrappy gray wolf trembling with the urge to run, attack, do anything other than let him see what she felt. After he leaned back on a tree trunk, his apparent nonchalance tilted the balance. She stalked away into the trees once more and then reappeared in human form, face frozen the way it always was when she tried too hard. The first words out of her mouth were, "When are you going to leave?"

Shock lanced through him and left him gaping. "What? What the hell?"

Avoiding his gaze, she folded her arms and looked anywhere but at his face. "Well, Saisha's not going to want to stay here, so you're leaving, right? Which I guess means I'm going to take over as Alpha because none of those other guys would know their heads from their asses."

"No." He didn't know how he could be so certain, but he was. "There's no way we're going anywhere. She needs stability. They've been moving all her life."

"Oh, yeah, I'm sure Bella's all in favor of that notion. What's your plan, earplugs for her while you drill her daughter?"

Rage spilled through his veins, but he quelled the urge to choke her before he spoke. "I'm not going to 'drill' her. It's not like that."

"Yeah, right." She wandered around aimlessly. "Saisha's told me some, about what Bella had to do to raise that girl. I still don't like her, but she's been through hell, and I don't think having Saisha tied to her boyfriend for life was one of her parenting goals, you know?"

"It wasn't my idea either, Leah! I'm not going to just... _go _with it, like you think!"

Dropping her arms, she turned to face him at last. "Then _what_, Jacob? Are you telling me you're going to be the special snowflake who makes imprinting new all over again? Because I'm pretty sure Sam didn't _mean _to dump my ass for my cousin."

There it was. Finally. It always took her so long. "Leah, Sam was lonely. He was a teenager. He was on his own. He couldn't tell you what was going on unless he got permission, and from my own experience I'm guessing the tribal elders weren't helpful in the slightest. I don't think Emily needed him to be her man as much as he needed something mandatory that he didn't feel like he could screw up, and somebody that the elders couldn't keep him from being honest with."

"I _know _that!" she shrieked, and then clapped her hand over her mouth, crying.

Jacob flashed back to Bella doing the exact same thing and cursed, striding over to risk his skin by pulling Leah into an embrace. She stiffened for an instant, and then gave in, leaning against him as she pressed her face to his neck, shaking with silent sobs. He shushed her, stroking her hair and rubbing her back. "It's okay. I swear, I'm not going to do that, Lee. I'm staying, okay? You don't have to be Alpha. You don't have to live on the rez. I wouldn't do that to you. And Saisha doesn't want to leave Seth, either. I'm not going to let this fuck us all up. I'm older than the others were, and I've been Alpha longer and this is _different._ Trust me. Do you think you can do that?"

She had slowly melted into him while he spoke, and now she nodded. "Yeah. Maybe." Pulling back, she scowled at him. "Congratulations, jackass. You found the _one thing _that would make me okay with you dating Bella Swan. Anything that's a fuck-you to imprinting is the preferable option to me."

He gave her half a shrug. "It might've occurred to me."

She snorted. "Don't make me sorry. And don't forget, I asked for time off before you left. I still need it."

"I haven't forgotten. You can leave as soon as you want, though it might be nice of you to wait around long enough to find out how all this is going to go down."

With a deep breath, Leah stepped away. "Yeah. I wouldn't want to leave Seth in the lurch, either. How do you think you're going to work this one out, Jake?"

Jacob shrugged again. "No fucking clue. But I'm damn sure that I'm not going to give Bella up again. We both waited long enough for this."

He spent the rest of the night contemplating the problem, until Quil groaned and begged for mercy or at least an Alpha shield to save his sanity. The problem was, Jacob couldn't come up with an answer to a two-sided problem with only his own point of view. He needed to talk to Saisha.

_Saisha! _the wolf exclaimed hopefully. _See?_

_Well, if her mom will let me._ That was a pretty iffy "if."

_Her. _The wolf sadly looked at the image of Bella in Jacob's mind. _Angry._

_Yup. Really fucking pissed is the technical term, I think._

_Saisha, _the wolf said again, but this time for a different reason. Paying attention, Jacob felt a new mind approaching. The sensation bore a strong resemblance to how he perceived the presence of the other werewolves when they were all in human form—he knew where they were and their general mood, but not their thoughts. He wagged his tail, unable to stop himself, and headed for the treaty boundary.

Just before he cleared the line, he remembered about the nudity issue and phased, donning his shorts quickly. He could already smell her—copper and roses and something indefinably Saisha—but his spine lit up the closer he came to her, burning with the same heat he'd experienced at the moment of imprinting. Looking around, he finally caught a glimpse of red hair, about thirty feet up in a nearby pine barely on the right side of the boundary line.

"Hey," he said.

She kicked one dangling foot a little. "Hi."

The sudden affection that rushed through him nearly robbed him of breath with its potency. "You gonna come down here, or should I come up there, demon spawn?"

She laughed, and the sound would have captured his heart if he hadn't already lost it. "You come up here, if you can. Animal."

"Weak, but a good first attempt," he judged. Launching himself upward, he caught onto a thick branch and pulled himself even with her. When they made eye contact, that same flood of affection overflowed the dam of his control. He _had _to smile at her. "What do you need? You came here for a reason, right?"

"I knew you needed to talk to me," she responded. Her face was still wary, but she kept examining him as if her curiosity wouldn't let her look away. "I could feel it. It's really weird."

"Yeah, that _is _weird. But I guess weird is to be expected with our kind of lives."

Saisha edged a little closer. More than anything, he wanted to pull her into a hug and promise it would all be okay, because he was going to take care of everything, but he could tell that would still scare her. She asked, "What do you want to talk about?"

"Figuring out the right way to deal with this."

Saisha scooted away again in a hurry. "I don't want to marry you."

"Marry me? Holy crap, are you serious? I don't want to marry _you_; I want to marry your mom." Jacob closed his mouth, too late, and then backpedaled. "I mean, someday. Not now. A long time in the future. Maybe. If she wants to."

"Oh. Oh!" Saisha's sudden smile dawned. "You want to figure out a way around it?"

He stared, completely entranced. She was so _adorable_. Good thing she'd already developed an interest in Seth or Jacob would be beating boys away with a stick. As it was, Seth had better be careful. Jacob had seen all his moves, however unwillingly, and he wouldn't hesitate to use that to keep the younger guy on the straight and narrow. "Or maybe just understand better how our imprint works. Ours is different. I can tell. If we put our heads together, maybe we can come up with an explanation that works for all of us. You, me, your mom, and Seth."

Saisha turned pink at the mention of Seth's name. "Okay. I like that idea." She moved nearer once more. "So. Tell me everything you know about imprinting, Jacob Black."


	13. Kya Karoon Haaye, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

**Massive thanks and snorgles to cretin, FatedFeathers, and HoochieMomma for all their awesome work that made this story so much better than I would make it on my own. (Confession time: on my own, I'm a shit writer. LOL) Thanks especially to FatedFeathers for allowing me to use part of her imprinting explanation from her fic Soulmatter. And thanks to all of you who gave this fic a chance. It's meant a lot. Song for this chapter: "Futures," by Jimmy Eat World.**

**# # #**

Saisha wasn't surprised to see sunlight filtering through the clouds—her internal clock always knew what time it was—but she was surprised she didn't feel more exhausted. Usually, talking to people who weren't her mom or Seth was tiring. Jacob, however, was easy. She never had to guess or ask about what he was feeling, because she already felt it. And that was really strange, but oddly freeing. Leaning back against the tree trunk, she yawned and let her eyes drift shut.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept you out all night. You need your sleep."

She cracked open one eye at the instant remorse flying from him. Human emotions were _strong, _and as easily redirected as a weather vane. "You sound like my mom. I'm fine. I can catch up later. It's not as if I'm still growing or anything."

"We need to get you home." Still, he didn't move. "How did your mom do after I left?"

That was a question of major importance. He was going to have to learn that keeping his tone of voice light wouldn't fool her. "I'm sorry; I don't know. I was too upset to remember to pay attention." Saisha sighed. "But when she thought I was asleep, she started crying in the kitchen and she didn't stop till she went to bed and fell asleep herself."

"Oh, God." Jacob buried his face in his hands. "This is such a mess."

"It really is. I was so sure I had failed—" Remembering he wouldn't understand, she stopped talking.

Jacob, however, looked up, curiosity dawning. "Failed at what? You know, I felt that, when you hit me, yesterday. I've had time to pull it apart now. What was all that about a letter? And did I see your dad? That was strange. I've never heard of any of the other imprints able to send their thoughts like that."

Saisha wanted to lie about her father's letter, but as soon as she opened her mouth she realized it wasn't going to be possible. The imprint wouldn't allow her to do so. Well, wasn't _that _problematic. "Did my mom tell you I was the reason she got the job at the camp?"

"Yeah. She said you were asking about me before, too."

"I was asking because… my dad had a letter with a lawyer waiting for my eighth birthday. He wanted me to try to reunite my mom and you."

"What?" Mouth falling open with shock, Jacob straightened so quickly he would have fallen from the tree if he hadn't possessed werewolf reflexes. "Are you kidding me?"

Saisha sorted through the different feelings: anger, surprise, resentment, reluctant appreciation. "You didn't like him. I don't know how he felt about you, but I do know he felt guilty about separating my mom from you."

"Yeah, well…" Jacob grumbled, but after a glance at her face he obviously decided against further complaint.

"As for the thoughts…" Saisha shrugged. "That's my gift. I can send telepathic thoughts through touch, to anyone, even my mom. Usually she's immune to anything that involves extrasensory perception directed toward the brain, but not with me."

Jacob grinned, pride flashing in his eyes. "You're amazing."

"Ha. Amazingly strange. I would have liked to have my father's gift. It would have come in a lot more useful than my own. But, I'm not very like him." She frowned.

After a moment, during which she sensed Jacob's thoughts racing, he spoke. "That's not really true. You're right, I didn't like your dad, but if he hadn't been with your mom I would have at least respected him. You look like him, you know."

"All I got was his hair," she protested.

"And his ears. His hands were bigger, but they had long fingers like yours. And the other guys'll never stop giving me hell if they find out I noticed that. Anything for the imprint. Shit." Saisha giggled in spite of herself. He shrugged. "He charmed everyone around him, just like you."

"Everyone except you," Saisha pointed out.

"I was already in love with your mom. But even Seth liked Edward." Jacob smiled. "You're stubborn like him. I can already tell. And you want what's best for your mom and you're willing to do anything to get it, just like him."

"That made my mom really mad."

"Just like your dad did when he tried the same sort of stuff." Laughing, Jacob pulled her to him in a sideways hug. "You got the good parts of Edward. Which makes you pretty decent, for the herald of the apocalypse."

As soon as he touched her, all the worry and tension ebbed away from Saisha's muscles. Jacob Black's side was the safest place she'd ever been. He was going to fix everything, and they were going to be happy. It was impossible to believe otherwise; his confidence wouldn't let her do so.

Ruffling her hair with his free hand, Jacob dropped the arm he had wrapped around her. "Let's go home before your poor mom thinks we've eloped or something disgusting like that. She's had enough trauma for a lifetime."

"Ugh. Yeah." Saisha leaped down to the ground in one smooth arc, and then looked up. "What're you waiting for?"

"You to get a head start, but if you _want _to lose…" He propelled himself to land beside her. "Let's go, mutant. If I win you have to explain to your mom what we were doing up here."

"Fine. If I win you have to explain." She raced away, letting herself go full-throttle just this once. If any passing hiker caught a glimpse of her, they'd never be able to interpret what they saw.

Before she'd traversed a couple of miles, Jacob caught up and then stopped dead just in front of her, tripping her with one casually outstretched foot. Saisha turned her fall into a roll and sprang back in time to kick him in the chest. Before he had a chance to jump up, she took off again, breathless with laughter. "You'd better hurry, old man!" she shrieked over her shoulder.

"Show some respect to your elders!" he yelled back.

This was so _fun. _She'd never been able to let go of every worry about accidentally offending or taking advantage of someone before. Jacob would always know exactly what she meant, and he couldn't be dazzled into romantic feelings. Soon he drew neck and neck with her, but this time he didn't try to cheat. In fact, the closer they drew to the house, the more he slowed, until when at last they reached the tree under her mother's window he lagged a good couple of meters behind her. He wasn't reluctant to talk to Bella, she realized. He wanted to be the one to explain everything.

Bella rushed out the front door the instant Saisha stood still. "Where have you _been_?" she demanded, reddened eyes wild with relief and anger. "Oh my God, Saisha, I am going to _kill _you, I've never been so scared in my entire life… Oh, shit." This last was muttered when Jacob came into view. One hand fluttered up to her hair, currently an unbrushed tangle spilling down her back, and then dropped again as she ground out, "What. The hell. Are you _doing_ with her?"

"Nothing like what you're imagining," he hastened to assure her, approaching with caution.

"Saisha, you went out to meet him?" Glaring, Bella asked, "What were you _thinking_, child?"

_She's so mad. _Saisha shrank back, but Jacob's lack of concern provided the reassurance she needed.

"You didn't leave a note?" Jacob asked Saisha.

Staring at her feet, she admitted, "I didn't think to."

"Yeah, thanks for paving the way for me there, spawn." Turning his attention to Bella, who was now positively vibrating with rage, he said, "We were trying to figure out how this works and what to do now."

"Great. Because I don't need to be a part of that discussion or anything. And don't call her spawn!"

"It's okay, Mom, I don't mind."

"_Not a good time, _Saisha."

"Sorry."

Jacob crossed his arms and looked at Bella steadily. "It's not that we were trying to cut you out, Bella. We just wanted to figure out what was different about us from the others. And it _is _different."

Collapsing down on the top step, Bella shook her head. "I don't see how it can be, Jacob."

Saisha sat down next to her and leaned her head on Bella's shoulder, laid bare by her sleeveless top. "Mom, if you let him explain, I think it'll make sense to you, too." She felt her mother relax a little in response to her certainty.

"Okay. Tell me."

Jacob, glancing first to Saisha for the go-ahead, began. "So, we've always thought that pups were the purpose of imprinting. I mean, unless you buy into the soulmate crap, which I don't."

"But I can't have children," Saisha interjected.

"Right." Jacob nodded. "She can't have children, so there's no point to me imprinting on her."

"_Unless _imprinting has a telepathic aspect."

Bella looked from Saisha to Jacob. "What's that have to do with it?"

"Well, remember how Jane's power didn't work on you? And neither did Dad's?"

"Yeah, sure."

"So obviously you've got a natural shield from mind-to-mind stuff."

Bella tilted her head, sighing. "Okay, that makes sense. So if imprinting is part telepathic, my shield would block it."

Kneeling down in front of her, Jacob met her gaze. "My wolf likes you, Bella. It's never paid attention to anyone else the way it does you, except Saisha. It knows who you are. It tries to get me to talk to you."

With a sad laugh, Bella reached to brush his hair back from his face. "That doesn't explain Saisha, Jake."

Saisha sat up, beaming with excitement. "It sort of does, Mom!"

"Right. It does." Jacob captured Bella's hand with his own and held it when she would have pulled it back. "You told me that the thing you're most afraid of is losing Saisha, right? But me, the way I was before I imprinted… I didn't even want to give her a chance. If I'd stayed hostile toward her, I would have lost _you, _right?"

"Yes," she replied, without an instant's hesitation.

Saisha, unable to resist, threw her arms around her mother's waist, careful as always not to crush her. Jacob smiled again, seeing it. "And that would have been the end. So, I think the imprint sort of… redirected itself."

Bella looked more hopeful, but not convinced. "That doesn't mean it won't change, when Saisha changes."

"The thing is, Saisha already _is _ready for a romantic relationship."

Slowly, Bella turned her gaze to her daughter, who immediately said, "I was going to tell you. I swear."

"Who is it?" To Saisha's surprise, Bella didn't seem upset, just curious.

"Seth Clearwater."

"Oh!" Bella thought about that for a moment. "Hmm. Is he still as sweet as he used to be?"

"Yes!" Saisha said in perfect sync with Jacob's, "No." At Bella's questioning glance, he clarified, "Not _nearly _as innocent as you remember. Trust me. I'm going to be keeping him on a tight rein."

"Anyway," Saisha rushed in, "I don't need an imprinted partner that way, and imprinting is supposed to be whatever the imprintee needs. I need something I've never been able to have."

"And what's that, honey?"

Finding herself unaccountably tongue-tied, Saisha looked to Jacob for help. He explained, "She needs someone to help her understand human feelings. She needs someone who can help her navigate her life. She needs another parent."

"Another parent." Bella didn't bother keeping her skepticism out of her voice. "And you're the werewolf for the job? You're only sixteen years older than her."

He shrugged. "She's an adult at eight. You had a half-vampire baby at eighteen. We're a bunch of monsters. It's just… the way we are. That's why we work together so well—we're _all _good at weird." Raising his eyebrows in challenge, he added, "I can prove it to you."

"Oh, really."

"Yes, really. Ready, Saisha?"

"Yeah." Easy enough to figure out what he wanted. Just to be sure, Saisha put her palm on her mother's face. "Okay, Mom. Feel this."

With a deep breath, Jacob dropped his own shield entirely, leaving his feelings completely exposed to Saisha. "This is how I feel about Saisha, Bells."

Saisha closed her eyes and sent all of what she sensed from Jacob straight to her mom. Protectiveness. Concern. Pride. Most of all, love. Not a hint of romantic or sexual interest. She was just too young for him, and the age she looked was as off-putting to him as the fact that she was Bella's daughter.

Bella finally spoke, her words cracked and hesitant. "Okay. Okay. I believe you. But Jake… I don't…"

"Why don't you show her how you feel about her the same way, Jacob?" Saisha suggested.

Jacob started laughing, but his guard clamped down tight. Being an Alpha had really taught him well. Reaching for her hand, he gently pulled it away from Bella's face. "I think I'm going to have to do that all by myself. Why don't you go visit Leah and Seth while I take care of it?"

"I just got back!" she complained.

"Please?"

The barely-restrained frustration and amusement leaking through his control finally reached her. "Oh." Trying her best not to think too hard about what methods of persuasion he was going to employ, she backed away. "Okay. I'll… see you later, then. I'm going to the Clearwaters'." Apparently now that she was an imprint, they couldn't deny the rez to her anymore.

"Call if you go anywhere else," Jacob and Bella said together.

Now it was Saisha's turn to laugh. "I will." Pulling her phone from the pocket of her sundress, she texted Seth as she started to run north again. _I think I have good news for you._

( * * * )

Bella turned away from Jacob as soon as Saisha disappeared from view, although Jacob could still hear his imprint's footsteps fading into the distance. "I'm too old for this." She didn't stop him when he followed her into the house, which had to be a good sign.

"Where's Charlie?" he asked, flipping the deadbolt home behind him.

"He left for work at six. That was what woke me up." Bella shuffled to the middle of the living room and looked around as if she'd suddenly gotten lost. "Um… do you want some coffee? Saisha bought a decent brand…"

"I've been up all night on patrol and then talking to Saisha." Jacob walked to the couch and sat down, grabbing her wrist to tug her beside him. "You're totally wasted tired, Bells. Come here."

Instead, she pulled her wrist free and stepped back. "I—I can't."

Rather than stand again and loom over her, he leaned back, spreading his arms across the back of the couch. "Why not?"

"Because… I can't. I'm going to take a shower." Bella pulled at her shirt, and for the first time he realized that she had worn both it and her jeans the day before. "I forgot to get one last night. Too distracted, I guess."

"Okay." Jacob watched her slowly climb the stairs. She must have slept wrong, because she had to take each step with both feet rather than alternating. Within a few minutes, he heard the water kick on and decided to lie down on the couch.

He had almost fallen asleep when the sound of Bella's crying reached his ears.

Within seconds, he stood outside the bathroom door, but indecision held him immobile. Her sobs only gathered in intensity, so at last he leaned on the frame and said, "Bells?"

A gasp, and a sniffle, but no other reply.

"Honey, c'mon. You know I can hear you. Don't make me stand out here, please."

A moment of silence, and then the lock turned in the knob. Taking that as an invitation, he let himself in. Bella stood in the fog billowing from the shower, shoulders slumped and eyes averted. Her hair hung limp from the steam. Closing the door behind him, Jacob asked, "What is it, honey?"

She shrugged, her hands fluttering up indecisively and then collapsing at her sides. "I just…"

He waited. Bella started crying again, so he asked, "You just what?"

"I'm so _old_, Jake!" she sobbed. "The pregnancy made me so weak, and Carlisle said I'll never fully recover, even though I've done what I can, and I saw the way you looked at me, like I was _damaged _and Saisha's young and beautiful and she'll never look any different, ever, and what's to say that someday you don't look over me at her and see someone right, right for who you are, instead of for who you used to be?"

Swearing at himself, Jacob reached for her, but she stepped back. Trying to keep calm, he said, "Bells, I didn't mean to look at you like you were damaged. I didn't think that about you; I was just upset that you had to be hurt like you were. You don't look bad, or old, or any of that shit. I'm never going to look at Saisha and think she's the one, because she's _not. _You're not old; you're only two years older than me. And you weren't perfect for who I used to be. You know that? We were _awful _for each other. If we would have gotten together, we would have broken up the minute you went to college—the way we related to each other was so fucked up by the time Edward proposed to you."

Bella hugged herself, the gesture bringing back all the worst memories—_neither one of us can hold our shape together right_—and said miserably, "But what about now? She's so perfect, Jake. You know that now. I could hardly blame you… I mean, when you look at the situation objectively, who's the one who's going to make you happiest?"

"It's going to be you," he replied, stepping closer again. This time she let him touch her, framing her face with his hands and lifting it to look at him. "It's always going to be you, Bells." Bella swallowed, but she didn't try to escape. Encouraged, he moved his hands down to her back, pulling her flush against him. She felt _right_, exactly as she always had, and yeah, maybe they hadn't been right for each _other _back then, but their bodies had always known they fit. If she would just let him do what they both wanted, she would know it too. "I swear it." Still moving with caution, in case she wanted to stop, he lifted her shirt over her head, exposing her naked torso. "Nobody else can ever be what _I _need from you. That's how I know. I need Bella Swan. Okay? You. No matter what." Bella whimpered, gripping into his back and hiding her face against his chest. "If you need to move somewhere else someday for your job..." Turning, he lifted her to sit on the sink edge, exposing more of her body to his gaze. Holy _shit _he wanted to get her naked. "If you want me to stop phasing…" He leaned down to nip her earlobe. She gave a shaky exhale in response, eyelids fluttering when he drew back again to look at her. "Even when we both really _are _old… If you let me stay with you, Bella, it's going to be you. Forever."

"I don't know, Jake," she protested in a faint whisper. At the same time, her fingers rose to his shorts and undid the top button. "Forever is so hard to promise."

"Yeah, but what we have is bigger than us," he argued, letting his shorts fall to the floor and starting to work on her jeans. "Look at how many things had to work together to bring us together again, after all this time. We're _supposed _to be with each other."

"This feels like taking the easy way out," she admonished, but her hands were greedy, clutching at him.

"Sometimes the easy way is better than overthinking things." So, so fragile. Her post-baby body was going to require even greater care than he would have needed to use before. Each rib seemed delicate as glass beneath his exploring fingertips. "And what do you mean, easy? I started dreaming about this a decade ago. Fucking torture, I'd call it. You're so damn pretty."

"My boobs say thank you," she told him on a laugh.

Jacob realized he was staring at her breasts instead of her face and laughed too. "I meant all of you, but yeah. Those too." Covering them with both hands, he leaned to kiss her mouth. She kissed him back with surprising eagerness, grabbing his arms to pull him closer. Breathing hard, he broke free to say, "This might be easy, but that's only because it's _right. _It's the most real thing I've ever felt, okay?" Any answer she might have made was smothered by more kisses. "Take these off," he begged, tugging ineffectually at her jeans until she hopped down enough to step on the cuffs and peel them from her legs. Lifting herself back onto the counter, she pulled him close once more.

In the bright overhead light, he could see both more and less: her scars were faded but her skin glowed like ivory, flushed and supple. Bella was alive; she wanted _him_; everything was perfect. He grabbed her waist and tilted her back so he could lick her nipples. Bella cut her nails into his shoulders, dropping her head and moaning as he tasted. Maybe it was the fact that he had begun fantasizing about her naked when he was fifteen, but Jacob suddenly suffered an overwhelming, juvenile conviction that he was going to die if he didn't get inside her right the fuck _now._

Fortunately, Bella seemed to be on the same page, because she angled away from his face, pausing only to drop kisses on his chest, and then ran her fingers over his erection before taking him into a firm grasp. She shivered as if he were the one who had her in hand, and her heartbeat jolted into an even faster pace.

"This is going to be a weird angle," she murmured, eyeing his body and then glancing behind her as if calculating trajectories.

"I'll make it work, trust me," he assured her. "Lean back and—_shit_." Bella had done more than lean back; she had guided him between her legs. He had meant to get her ready, considering it had been so long since she last slept with anyone, but she didn't seem interested in waiting. Jacob watched his fingers leave thread-fine cracks in the Formica and pushed, concentrating on breathing and not humiliating himself while she slowly, slowly enveloped him in tight wet warmth.

"Jake," she whispered, and he lifted his gazed. Tilting her chin, she looked up at him, naked love all over her face. "You're right. _This _is right."

_I know, _he meant to say, but his throat closed. He hadn't realized how terrified he was of losing her until now, when the threat was gone. Helpless, he reached to cradle her face in the palm of his hand and nodded.

Eyes soft with understanding, she caressed his hand with her own. "It's okay." Jacob took that as permission to start moving; she trembled when he did. He groaned, reaching to touch where he entered her. Bella redirected his fingers to her clit, and he cooperated, letting her set the pace while she shook and whimpered before him. He was so desperate for her his head spun with it, but he managed to cling to control until at last every muscle in her body tightened and she convulsed, crying out so loudly it rang in his ears. It wasn't like he was going to complain about that, though; especially not now, when he could pull her to his chest and hold onto her hips and push into her as hard and fast as he wanted to. Bella's body had gone pliant in the wake of her orgasm, fitting to him so exactly that she really did feel made to be there.

Habitual fear still lurked in the back of Jacob's mind, making him wonder if he should make this last as long as possible in case it never happened again, but he pushed it away and decided to trust what she had told him. He came in a heated rush so powerful that he forgot to be mindful of his strength. When he came back to himself, he knew a moment's panic. Looking down, he saw that Bella was fine, planting tiny kisses wherever her lips could reach. He relaxed and lazily swept his hands up and down her back.

At last, she said, "C'mon, let's get a shower." Together they stepped into the spray. After she soaped up her hair, she turned back to him. "In a way, this is a relief. Now I never have to wonder if imprinting is going to spring itself on us."

"Imprinting was the thing I was afraid of, too. Now that it's out of the way, I'm so happy I could sing."

Giggling, Bella leaned back to look at him. "You said that before. The night after you saved me from drowning."

"I do too." It had been the last time he'd felt truly happy for weeks, maybe months, but he didn't want to mourn lost opportunities. Not now, not when he was about to get everything he'd ever wanted, if he could just make her see that it was going to be all right. "I still don't think you'd want to actually hear it."

She waggled her head in an indecisive way. "Hmm. Maybe I would."

"Nah. Here, let me kiss you instead." She complied, and he forgot everything except her mouth beneath his. Finally, however, he remembered he hadn't slept in twenty-four hours. "Holy shit, I'm tired," he complained, pouring shower gel onto his hand to start washing up. It reeked of flowers but he wasn't in the mood to gripe about it.

Bella gave a crack of laughter and backed into the water to rinse her hair. "Some things never change. Poor Jake. You can sleep on my bed."

She conditioned her hair and then got out, but he caught her arm. "Come with me."

"That'll just make Charlie mad if he comes home before we wake up." Shaking her head, she brushed his hair back, away from his face. "Don't worry, Jake. You don't have to hold onto me. I'll still be here when you wake up."

He protested, but she insisted, shepherding him into her room before closing the bedroom door behind her with a pointed _click_. Jacob lay awake for a little while, listening to her putter downstairs. Out of habit, he counted the different minds linked to his own: Quil. Jared. Paul. Leah. Seth. Brady. Collin. Saisha, a bright light in the middle of the others, happy now that Seth and she were together.

_All good, _the wolf decided. Everyone was exactly where they belonged, including Bella, now humming in the kitchen. The pack was at peace. Everybody was safe, even Jacob.

For the first time, he really let himself believe it, and relaxed into sleep.


	14. Epilogue

**A/N: Thank you so much to all of you who read, and special gratitude for HoochieMomma and FatedFeathers for their prereading and beta magic. Any mistakes are my own, of course. The song for this epilogue is "Circuital," by My Morning Jacket.**

**# # # **

The buzzing of her phone woke Saisha from a weird dream, so she didn't mind, even though it was an hour earlier than her usual time. Rolling over, she checked the screen and clicked on the "new text message" icon. Seth. _You up yet? I'm bored._

_I am now, _she texted back, and then ran to wash her face.

When she got back, a new message awaited her: _Sorry._

_I'm not. I had the strangest dream where Jacob was crying in his wolf form and my dad was hugging him._

A long pause, and then, _Your subconscious is a messed-up place to be, Sonny._

_I KNOW. Are you ready for today?_

_All I have to do is show up. Are you ready?_

_I think so. Is Leah still complaining about the dress?_

_Yeah, no worries. I'll get her in it. She loves the heels, anyway. Anything that makes her taller than me._

Saisha giggled. _I think Jacob won't care if she shows up in cutoffs tbh._

_Ooh, text-speak. I'm so proud. ;) I think you're right. Let's spend all day at the pool and get her drunk._

_GOOD PLAN._

_None for you, ten-year-old._

_Seth!_

_At least not in public. You don't want to get your mom in trouble._ The next message came through right after:_ It's about as pointless for you as it is for me regardless._

_Fine._ Checking the weather report, Saisha saw that nothing but clouds were expected on the Big Island, just as she'd hoped. Jacob's sister had worried about them coming in winter, but Jacob had fobbed her off with the excuse that he and Bella wanted to get married on the anniversary of the day she'd brought the motorcycles up to La Push. The real reason, of course, was so Saisha would have a better chance of being able to go out and have fun without being covered in makeup. Donning a sundress, she headed across the hall to knock on Seth's door, but he yanked it open before she did more than raise her fist. "Whoa. Good morning?"

"I'm so damn jetlagged," he answered, grabbing her hand. He'd been doing that more and more often, but Saisha still wasn't used to it. She ducked her head to hide the rising color in her cheeks and concentrated on harmless thoughts as he pulled her down the hallway. "Let's go drink a pot of coffee or three. Who knows, it might help if we chug it all own at once."

"Have you talked to Leah?"

"I think she might've hooked up with that guy she was talking to on the beach yesterday. The one with the golden retriever? I texted her after you but she hasn't answered yet. Anyway, I'm sure she'll be back in time."

Saisha didn't share his confidence, but she decided it wasn't worth arguing about. If she had to, she'd track Leah down herself. They arrived downstairs just as the staff were putting out the breakfast buffet.

Saisha couldn't help but notice the awed looks turned their way by the time Seth and she finally made their way out of the dining room. Laughing, Seth remarked, "I don't think they could figure out where the food kept disappearing to."

"It gets overwhelming when we go to buffets at the same time. Good thing we don't have to worry about living here because..." Saisha trailed off as she set foot onto the stairs, and then turned on her heel. "Let's go outside."

Seth gave her a puzzled look. "Why?" At her grimace, he winced. "Are you serious? Again? It's your mom's wedding day. She should be getting ready. Those two are like rabbits!"

"I'm really glad for Jacob's ability to shield; let's just put it that way." Saisha started walking toward the pool. "When he goes opaque I've learned to run in the other direction. Anyway, Mom keeps saying she wants it to be really low-key and I guess that means not getting ready until she can't delay it any longer. Hey, Grandpa!"

"Isha," Charlie greeted from his chaise lounge. Setting down his e-reader, he asked, "Seen your mom this morning?"

"No, not yet. You should go get breakfast before it's done." Saisha settled into the chaise beside his. "They had pineapple that sm-looked fresh, though I don't think it's the season for it so I'm not sure."

"Peak season's April and May, but you can get 'em year round," Seth interjected, sitting at the pool's edge to dip his feet in. Turning to see Saisha's raised eyebrows, he shrugged. "I like pineapple. I looked it up."

The buzzing of her phone interrupted her laughter. Pulling it from her pocket, Saisha read, _I'll be there. Don't hunt me down._

"I think your sister knows me a little too well," she told Seth. "She's fine, by the way."

He lay back on the concrete, as comfortable as if it were his bed. "No surprise. She can take care of herself. I'm useless to the women in my life."

"No, that's not—" Saisha hastened to reassure him, but then trailed off with an exasperated huff at his upside-down grin. "I can't believe I fell for that _again_."

"You're too easy, Sonny."

Saisha bit her tongue against the retort that sprang to mind, which was _you're not easy enough. _That was proof positive of the effect Jacob's imprint had worked on her mind: those sorts of jokes were about ten times easier to make and comprehend now. The problem was, she still wasn't always certain of whether or not they were appropriate. Jacob's definition on that front varied widely from her mother's. Still, she'd been an adult, physically speaking, for _years _now and hadn't even been kissed. She knew for a fact that Seth had been kissed plenty of times since they met, mostly because he'd never attempted to hide it from her.

_I'm not going to make you feel like you have to choose me so I don't end up alone and sad, _he told her when she taxed him with it.

_How about making me feel like you'll never choose me because I'm not enough to hold your attention? _she demanded, close to tears.

Jacob, who was sitting far enough away to grant them nominal privacy but not so far that he couldn't hear them, harrumphed at this.

Seth's face softened, and he patted her back. She jerked away with a petulant sound. _Sonny, trust me, if you decide you're ready for my attention, we'll put that theory to the test._

And with that she had to be content, because the truth was, she _wasn't _ready, and she knew it. The thought of a grown-up romantic relationship with Seth, and all that would entail, was far more scary than it was exciting at the time. What if she messed it up because she was too immature and ruined their chances forever? At the _moment, _however, far from home and all things familiar, it was starting to sound very doable.

Seth settled back down and smiled, eyes closed. "Your mom and Jacob are down now. It's safe to go upstairs. Need any help getting stuff together?"

"No, thanks. Not unless you know how to arrange flowers." After a second, she reconsidered. "_Do _you know how to arrange flowers?"

"Nope. But that doesn't mean I can't cut ribbon and hold stems for you or whatever."

"It's okay. I've just got two bouquets to do."

Despite the simplicity of the wedding plans, Saisha found the day flying by as she ran around performing last-minute errands, giving Billy, Rachel, and Rebecca directions to the stretch of beach they were using, cajoling Leah into the heels despite their lack of practicality, and coordinating with the planners to make sure the walkway and stage were set up in a way that ensured access to Billy's wheelchair. Before she knew it, Jacob was standing in front of her, an immovable object, saying, "If you still want to be maid of honor, you'd better get your dress on, spawn."

"I _know _what time it is," she told him with great dignity, and then as soon as she was out of sight shot up the stairs, taking them three at a time. She didn't fool him, of course; she heard his snort as the stairwell door swung shut behind her.

There were times when being a hybrid came in handy, and most of those times involved the faster-than-human speeds she could attain. Within fifteen minutes she walked out of her room dressed, with makeup on every visible inch of her skin—and there were a lot of inches visible in this dress. Crossing to her mother's room, she knocked and called, "Mom? Are you ready for me to do your hair?"

Bella opened the door with a smile. "Sure!"

Saisha stared. "Wow. You look _amazing_." Finding a wedding dress that hid Bella's shoulders but showed off her legs had been a task and a half, and added to that had been the complication that Bella flat-out refused to wear white. In the end, though, they had found a satin banded canary-yellow dress that came up above the knee and had cap sleeves.

Bella grinned and twirled, obviously delighted with herself. "Thank you! I'm so excited. Listen, I've been thinking, with the wind the way it's been, probably it's better to go with something a little more secure than the chignon."

"That's true. How about the half-up, half-down one we looked at before?"

After some discussion, they agreed on a style that showed off the length of Bella's locks while getting them away from her face.

"I wonder if you should go check on Leah," Bella mused, just as Saisha's phone buzzed with another couple of texts from Seth.

"No, her brother's got it handled," she reported. "Let's do makeup and then we can go."

Bella didn't look convinced. "What do you mean, 'handled'?"

In answer, Saisha showed her the screen of her phone. _Got her dressed and her hair done but she's bitching that the cut makes her look pregnant. I told you she hated empire waist._

"Text him back and tell him that's what she gets for refusing to help me look," Bella said with a laugh, turning back to her mirror.

Saisha did, and then snatched a brush from her mother's hand. "No! Let me do that. You haven't even put on moisturizer, Mom. Do you have any idea how many instructional articles and books I read to get ready for this?" As an afterthought, she added, "By the way, Jacob's ready. I'm pretty sure they just left."

Bella raised her eyebrows, and hurriedly lowered them at Saisha's glare. "Sorry. You can feel that now?" Her phone chimed; glancing at the message from Jacob, she sighed. "You guys keep getting weirder and weirder."

"I know. Like he says, we're all a bunch of freaks. Good thing we found each other."

"Hey." Bella caught Saisha's hand and kissed it. "Have I thanked you lately for doing that? Because thank you."

"Even though it was invasive and manipulative," Saisha said in unison with her. They laughed, and Saisha continued by herself, "Hold still or we'll be late."

At last, they left to join the rest of the party, Saisha driving while Bella fussed in the mirror. When Saisha giggled, Bella asked, "What?"

"It's just... Aunt Alice told me how you were when you married my dad. She said she honestly couldn't see if you were going to run until ten minutes before the ceremony. And now you're like a kid who's about to go to Disneyland." Suddenly realizing how inappropriate that observation was, she backtracked, "No. I'm sorry. Can we pretend I didn't say that?"

"It's all right, honey." Reaching for her hand, Bella gave it a squeeze. "I'm always going to be glad I married your dad because I got you out of the bargain. And yeah, this go-round I'm way happier. Mostly because it was my idea, too. Are you sure you won't mind me hyphenating?"

"Actually, about that..." Saisha gave her mom a shy glance as she turned into the parking lot. "I've been wondering if you would mind if _I _changed my name."

"_What,_" Bella said in such a flat tone that it wasn't a question.

Appalled at the obvious consternation on Bella's face, Saisha said, "If you don't want Jacob to adopt me, it's okay, I totally understand—" Or at least she would once Jacob explained it to her.

"Oh. _Oh!_" Bella burst into relieved laughter. "Of course I would love that, honey. I thought you were telling me that Seth and you were getting married."

Saisha mustered up a weak smile in response to her mother's hilarity. "Yeah. That would be a bad thing considering he hasn't done more than hold my hand."

"Exactly." Bella leaned to give her a kiss on the forehead. "Saisha, you are a joy and a delight and I think that you becoming a Swan-Black is an excellent notion. Now. Let's get this show on the road."

"I still think it should be Black-Swan," Saisha said as they got out of the car.

"Nope, still a bad idea," Jacob replied from where he waited for them, a big grin dawning on his face. He said it too quietly for Bella to hear him; Saisha bit her lip to hide her amusement.

Bella had insisted on no frills for the ceremony itself, so she had no musical accompaniment as she made her way to the wedding party beside Saisha. Charlie, Billy, Seth, Rebecca, Rachel, and Rebecca's sons sat in some folding chairs to the side, but with the exception of Billy rose to their feet at Bella's approach. Leah, beautiful despite her protests in her sleeveless black gown that stopped just past her ankles, stood in the best man's position, holding a ring box in her hand. Saisha took her place and, as the wind picked up a little, folded a chiffon wrap around her mother's shoulders.

The minister smiled at them all and began, "Dearly beloved..."

Saisha listened with one part of her attention while the rest was directed toward trying to gauge Seth's reaction to her appearance. To her slight disappointment, all _his _attention seemed to be aimed toward Jacob and Bella, although she supposed it was the appropriate thing for him to focus on. The sun became more and more clear in the sky as the ceremony progressed, sinking toward the ocean in a fiery show of oranges and reds, until at last it began to dim and the wedding planner flew around with her employees lighting tiki torches.

"I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride," the minister finally concluded. Jacob caught Bella up in an embrace more notable for its fervor than its grace, but she didn't seem to mind, twining her arms around his neck as she stood on tiptoe. The photographer clicked away while the observers clapped and laughed. When Jacob finally released his wife, she started laughing too.

A lingering final ray of the sun cleared a low-lying cloud, and a flash of diamond-studded sparkle behind a nearby building caught Saisha's eye.

Nobody else seemed to notice, cheering the minister's announcement of the new married couple. The string quartet Saisha had begged her mother to allow her to pay for struck up the recessional, which consisted of Bella running to the guests and hugging everyone while Jacob did the same.

That same glitter and light refracted against the walls of the building again. Saisha swallowed hard and looked at Seth. This time, she clearly wasn't the only one who had seen it. He edged over next to her and, under cover of the surf and the excited babbling of the others, leaned to whisper in her ear, "Anybody we expected?"

Saisha shook her head. "They know about Mom's wedding. I sent an invitation to Volterra and to Aunt Rose and Uncle Emmett up in Denali. But they all sent their regrets."

"Let's go check it out," he suggested.

Saisha couldn't hide her delight at this suggestion. Seth wanted her to come with him, as a team. But on the other hand, if it was some insane nomad, it would be just the two of them. Jacob gave her a sharp glance, no doubt sensing her mixed feelings, and that made up her mind. Mouthing _be right back_ at him, she grabbed Seth's hand and headed toward the mysterious stranger.

As she stepped into the alley, the sun finally slipped beneath the horizon, yielding to the purples and grays of twilight. The wind shifted, and the newcomer's scent touched her. She relaxed; nobody but "vegetarian" vampires had that particular underlying note. At the same moment, however, Seth stiffened by her side, swearing under his breath. "Sonny, let's go, I don't think it's anything—"

"It's all right, Seth," said the vampire. He stepped out from behind a nearby dumpster.

"I wasn't worried about _you_," Seth replied, voice shaking, and Saisha's knees gave way beneath her, because the vampire was Edward Cullen.

Seth caught her to his side, but before she straightened her father was standing next to her. "Saisha!"

For the first time her life, her vocabulary—in all eight languages—deserted her. She was left gasping, "What—what—what—"

Unwittingly, Seth provided the impetus needed to recover when he shoved Edward away with his free hand and growled, "You son of a bitch_. _You let her think you were dead!"

The comment jarred her brain into working order. "No, Seth." Straightening, Saisha stepped away from the protective circle of Seth's arm and tilted her head to examine her father. "I know why he did it." Although she was used to the unaging faces of her Cullen relatives, for some reason the minute changes in her mother's countenance had subconsciously formed an expectation of a similar effect on Edward Cullen. The sight of a boy, one who looked to be the same physical age as she, set her heart pounding with shock.

A crooked smile pulled at the corners of Edward's mouth. "I hoped you would."

"Yeah, well, I think it's bullshit." Seth was struggling to keep himself under control; Saisha could tell from the waves of heat from his body that swept into her back. "There's no possible reason that would be good enough."

"It was for my mother," Saisha told him, and he fell into silence, though his breathing remained rough and his heartbeat uneven.

Moving with caution, Edward reached to run a strand of her hair between his fingers. "It wasn't only for her. More than anything, I wanted _both _of you to be able to live in the human world, and that meant being raised by a human who understood human mores. But, there was one thing I knew about your mother, better than she did. She would always forgive me, even for something as terrible as what I did. And as soon as she forgave me, she would take me back, and that would mean that she would eventually have to be turned."

"So, to keep her from forgiving you, she had to believe you were dead."

"That makes no sense," Seth protested.

Grief warred with understanding, and understanding won. Saisha felt the echo of her father's smile curving her own lips. "It does, though. To a seventeen-year-old."

"Can _you _forgive me?" he asked, searching her face. "From the first moment I saw you, I knew how greatly I had wronged you. How greatly I had wronged both of the most important girls in my life. It seemed you would end up happier without me."

Saisha couldn't argue with that, but she _could _scold, "You should have told me. I've _been _to Volterra."

"I worried that you would insist on staying, at least part-time, and that would have harmed the development of your human half."

Sighing, Saisha shrugged in concession. "I probably would have." She shook her head at him. "You always would do anything for Mom. Jacob was right."

"He said that?" Edward looked in the direction of the wedding. "In the end, I think we understood each other better than we understood ourselves." Returning his gaze to Saisha, he added, "I didn't intend for you to see me tonight, but once you did, I was too selfish to run as I should have. Another wrong to add to my account." He gave her a mischievous look. "Then again, since you're more mature than I am now, maybe I should appeal to your adult sense of fairness."

Saisha laughed, then sobbed, and then his arms closed around her and she hugged him back, unable to stop herself from crying into his shirt.

A few minutes later, Edward pulled away. "I'm so sorry, but Jacob's getting worried about you, and he'll come to check on you both in a moment. I must leave. But I'll look forward to your next visit." To Seth, he said, "Take care of her, Seth."

"She's been raised to take care of herself," Seth replied, surveying him with narrowed eyes from his position against the alley wall. "But I'll be happy to keep her company."

"That's as good as can be expected, I suppose," Edward said, and, with a burst of speed too great even for Saisha to follow, he vanished.

Turning to Seth, she smiled. "Let's go back."

"Let me fix your makeup first." He rubbed at a few places beneath her eyes, and then asked, "You gonna be okay?" clasping her hand in his own.

"Yeah, but I might realize how I really feel about this later on tonight, or next week. You never know." They turned their steps toward the wedding. She laughed. "There _is _one thing I know, though. Did you catch what Edward said about my maturity?"

"Yeah, you're... more mature than he is..." Seth trailed off, no doubt catching the images she couldn't quite keep from springing to mind.

Tugging her fingers free from his grasp to preserve what was left of her privacy, she nodded. "That's right. I'm legal now, Clearwater. My dad said so."

Before he could respond, Jacob and Bella shouted and waved from their table. Laughing, Saisha left Seth behind, and ran to join her family.

_the end_


End file.
